After The Sky Fell

It had been a few weeks since the sky had fallen when I was walking to the park along what had once been P Street. The cleaning process for all this was enormous and we had been told that it would still be months to a year before all the bits of sky were cleaned up from the streets. I picked my way over debris and bits of broken up sky, found an old trash can lying on its side across the sidewalk and moved it next to someone’s house. Walking through this part of Georgetown was never easy, the old brick streets were always a pain, but now it was just absurd. Huge bits of sky and old, rotting clouds lay about the sidewalk causing you to walk well out of your way to get around them. There were about three blocks along M Street that were totally unusable due to the amount of sky that crashed down there. Rosslyn was a mess.
I got to the park and cleared off a chunk of sky to sit down on. It was cold, a bit wet from morning dew, and felt rather like sitting on a thick glass table. Out before me, the field looks cold and empty. No longer a place of cheer and recreation, it is frighteningly quiet these days. The grass spreads out before me, the blades dark and foreboding with moisture. No flower can be seen anywhere. There are no trees. Only grass. In this sad, empty park, sitting on a broken piece of sky I feel so very alone.
From somewhere I hear music. Someone is singing. The sound is barely audible, little more than a whisper on the breeze, but it is unmistakable to me as music. It floats on the air before my eyes and it is unmistakably the color of music. It is hauntingly beautiful; slow and solemn, riding the minutest changes in the still air. It does not flash or glimmer like some songs. It dances slowly; falling down in supplication, kissing gently the wet grass before rising again with quiet dignity. It strikes me as weak, dancing about as if under an enormous weight. Or an enormous pressure. It wanders about, meaningfully but slowly, with great difficulty. Finally, I see it fall.
It falls and is heard no more. The quiet that follows is staggering. I am not surprised to find that I am weeping.
A moment later the bird flies down. She lands next to me, perched on my bench of broken sky. “What’s wrong?” She chirps. Her concern is genuine, if not sentimental.
“I feel so alone.”
“That’s because you are alone. We are all of us completely alone.” She says this matter-of-factly, without malice, without emotion at all. “Our lives are our own. Our feelings, our existences are wholly individual. You are alone and you can’t live a proper, happy life if you’re in denial of that fact. Your life is your own and now that you know that you have to go and make it your own.”
For the first time I truly mourn the loss. The sky is gone. Forever. The light has faded, diminished, extinguished and it will never come back. I cry loudly, my face contorted and ugly. My own weakness sickens me. “Get away from me. Leave me alone.”
“I’m always here for you.”
“Get the fuck away from me!” I scream. My strength is gone. I fall to the ground. The wet grass stabs my skin and I shake convulsively, sickly. They have become knives and they slice me open. I am wracked with pain, with guilt, with fear and loneliness. The permanence of the situation has finally dawned on me. The sky crashes anew, falling on me, breaking my bones, breaking my spirit. I am being crushed by the weight of the emptiness around me. Inside my head I’m screaming. The pressure builds and builds inside me, rattling my skull and pushing against this barrier of bone. Finally, it explodes out of me. I’m screaming, crying, bursting. My ears bleed, my nose bleeds, my eyes bleed.
I shake once, twice, and then I am silent and still on the ground. The bird is still perched above me. “I’m always here for you,” she says.
“I know,” I breathe.
There is no more.