Flash Fiction by Richard M. Ankers
The pain increases with every passing minute. An indivisible barrier separates my soul from my heart. They know they were once a single entity, and cling to each other desperately, but this is a foolishness born from cold desperation. Souls go on, but hearts have a limited timeframe in which to thrive.
The only way forward is to break apart, like a glacier shearing from its greater whole and setting sail across the coldest of all oceans. Searching for what it has never known. Trying instead of making do. Somewhere, there rises a warming sun to displace the trapped atoms of oxygen caught in stalled, stagnant breaths. Where lungs shall be free to breathe easily, without fear of every frosted inhalation being their last. And yet…
You never truly lose the severed limb. The toes twitch. The fingers curl. Skin tingles. A tongue may lash. Understanding that they do, and can, and will, regardless of no longer being a part of the body, is the trick. Like a blinkered racehorse following its nose, you run with it. I run. But we run no more.
Separate lives. Is this what it is? Is this what it shall remain? Two who were one now divided by barbed wire fences and words that tangle like briars. By signed papers bearing strange names. By miles of glacial ice.
And there it is, the frosting. The steady chill. The cold burn.
How I yearn for that sun to sail into view, but I’m unsure if I’ll ever feel its warmth again.
Text © Richard Ankers
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