the boy in the black jacket

They say humans are transient. 

Temporary, brief, makeshift. We live barely past the period of a century, but in such a short span; we love, we hate, we laugh, we cry, we create, we destroy, we dance, we give, we take, we sing, we feel, and we experience and move so many times and in so many ways that nothing that happens to us truly ever lasts for a lifetime. Everything eventually becomes a memory. Something so vivid and so present, becomes something so faint and so distant. Some things hit us harder than others, some things move us more than others, but all the same; does it ever truly last? 

Is it not only a naïveté who wishfully believes that everything lasts forever? That there is no end? That life goes on and on until one grows old? That all there is to the human experience is living and giving and existing? 

Alas, I was such a naïveté. But today, I face my foolish notions head on. In my final moments, with the sharp knife of reality finally confronting me both literally and metaphorically, and with the soul shattering gaze of the figure standing across from me, I gasp for air. 

He looks at me. I look at him. And it is in this moment we lock eyes, that the world seems to come to a standstill. The air is quiet. The earth is motionless. The last pin has dropped. And as the final bits of life slowly drain out of me, I drink him in. 

There he stands. He’s tall, and he’s thin, and he’s got a bone-chilling scar sliced directly above his left eye. His face is reddish and rough, and his eyes sparkle with the overwhelming intensity of a hundred silver emeralds. His hair’s an unusual colour; perhaps bluish blonde. It’s thick and it’s straight, and it’s curled sharply at the top. He has a fat, pointed nose, that reminds me of my own father’s nose. A nose I now realise I will never see again. . His lips are thin and chapped- almost grey, with a little mole resting beside them. He’s a fine looking lad; with features excellently connected together to make him who he physically is. 

I stare below his neck. It’s long and pale, and there’s another scar there. It looks white. 

And then I fixate my eyes on his jacket. . 

The long thick black jacket engulfing his body like an endless cape, running just  below his knees. The material looks smooth and expensive, its almost shining under the silver moonlight. Its got tiny little circles spread like waves across. They looks like interconnected chains; ending just below his neck. His pale face contrasted by the black jacket makes for an interesting combination. Below the jacket he wears nothing but old brown boots. His legs are skinny and scrawny; seemingly like they belong on a sick young child. The boots are large and loose – in a way that further emphasizes  his undersized legs. 

To me, the jacket is the most noticeable feature about him still. It is ; to a large extent, what’s making me face the reality I had never once bothered to ponder about. 

Right now, as I lay on the wet and muddy grass, with the vicious stab wound in my chest draining away every ounce of life I have left; I realize that this is death staring at me. 

Death is a thick black black jacket, watching me, calling me, engulfing me, emphasizing my comparative insignificance. I am; essentially, nothing but a tiny spec in the vast expanse of the cosmos. Death is bigger than me. There is no such thing as happily ever after, there is no such thing as a guaranteed long life. Not for me. Not for millions of others. It breaks my heart to think that I did not recognize this sooner. 

My life is like a needle in the grand old haystack. Transient, like me. In this moment, everything is over. 

I will never laugh again, never cry again, never create, never destroy, never give, never take, never dance again. Never feel, never hear the voices and never see the faces of those who matter the most to me. Never watch them grow and change with the passing of time, never be apart of that change. 

And perhaps damning of all; I will never love again. I will never feel that sick rush of passion and intimacy that drives me insane, I would never feel that care and that radical empathy for anyone again. All my emotions are transient. All my relationships, all my experiences, all my life; transient. Mortal, temporary, fugacious. It is now that I realize that everything I had taken for granted; waking up, feeling the sun, screaming, crying, dancing, hugging, singing, soaring, just being- it was all going. Leaving. Ending. Fleeting. My mind flashes through everything and everyone; my family, my friends, my lovers and my haters, and it all rushes to me with the dangerous speed of an endless stream drowning me in a tumultuous wave of nostalgic heartbreak. 

Heartbreak at what I’ll be missing. Heartbreak at what everyone else would be missing. 

In a sharp flash. In a simultaneously brief but long- lasting moment. All at once. It all comes to me. 

It’s a moment I know I cannot not fight. I do not want to fight. 

The boy in the black Jacket gazes at me in a look I will never recieve again. 

It is as if we are strangers; have never met  before, and yet it is also as if we know each other with an fiercely unmistakable intimacy that can never be matched. Will never be matched. 

As the wind slowly moves his loose black jacket, the world begins to move again too. It doesn’t care. It isn’t alive. The black jacket isn’t alive either. It surrounds the boy; but it doesn’t  care about him. The world surrounds me; but it does not care about me. When he dies, it won't weep, it won't moan. For, in truth, it has lost nothing of significance. It moves on. Intact. Possibly, it will even find a new owner. Only those who know him will weep. And only those who know me will weep. 'Tis the same with the world. It does not laugh when he laughs, nor sing when he sings, nor love when he loves. 

Nor die when he dies. 

He values the black jacket, the black jacket does not value him. The jacket brings the boy comfort, the boy does not bring anything to the jacket. Even if he did, why would it care?

 It is inanimate. Indifferent. Motionless.

He is animate, caring, ever shifting. 

This fundamental difference shall never reconcile. 

And, this is the inconvenient truth of life.

It is a pity I am only now accepting this in my own death. 

The boy with the black jacket seems to understand. He nods. Instinctively, it is like he knows he has to just leave me there. No yelling; no shouting; no calling for help. He knows it’s my end. He knows I know it’s my end. He knows we both know we must not, and must not want to fight this. 

And so as he walks out of view, I close my eyes. Everything is shutting down. I can feel it. It was done. I was done. 

I feel myself turn into nothingness as the world is already moving on around me. 

Now I too, am motionless, indifferent, and soon to be forgotten. 

Gone. Like the boy in the black jacket. Forgotten. Like the needle in the haystack.

Powerless. Like the single grain of sand that rests on the dunes of the impassive world, only to be blown away in the wind.

Never to be remembered or even ever known by those who come after. 

Done. And now it is finished.