nothing

This is a story about nothing.

This is a story about a woman breathing her last breath and leaving nothing in this world. This is a story about a woman’s death, and her life, and everything she ever loved. This is not a sad story. This is a story about nothing.

In her life, like all the rest, nothing existed and nothing created. In her life nothing was loved and nothing lost. She looked at the bleeding morning sky and asked god what was the meaning of life. A breeze danced in her hair, spun circles and whispered into her ear,

“Dear sweet child. Nothing”

A man walked up to her and took her pale hand in his. He touched his lips to her skin with a kiss gentle as a butterfly’s flight.

“Who are you?” the man pleaded.

“I am nothing,” the woman responded, and slipped her hand from his.

In the azulian shadows of midnight a knife slipped from her tear-stained palms. Blood raced to the floor to meet the puddle of tears. Red, salt, and blue, swirling together in galaxies. She gasped and clenched her stomach, pleaded with the universe, “Nothing is worth living for.”

Beds of grass lay flattened beneath her. In the sky there is a heart, then a pulse, then nothing. Clouds come and pass, and she stays still. Nothing stays still in this world. Everything pulses, pulses through. Nothing created, old recycled into the new. Nothing matters. Nothing is here. Nothing. Nothing.

In the beginning, there was a woman. There were doctors and nurses and a screaming woman. Monitors and a rapid beat competed with the woman, but her screams were primitive, older than technology, older than man. They were the screams of life. Nothing, the woman stammered as she looked down at the silent baby in her hands, pushing one last breath out of her body. Big eyes filled with all the possibilities of this earth stared back at her. In those eyes was meaning, love, life itself. Nothing more precious has ever existed, she would have said if her heart had beat just one more beat. But life, like time, spares no second in moving on. So all the woman said was “Nothing”