Monochromatic

Falling, chest tight, breath constricted, into the unknown. At first, I see a blue haze, a fuzzy form, edges undefined. Flailing, grasping at the air displaced by my body, pushing back. But why?

Yesterday, the end of a typical day: cleansed, relaxed, gentle music, lights dimmed, snuggling next to warm bodies, unwinding. At peace. Today… shaken vigorously.

The blue taking form. Strips of indigo, dark blues, mediums, light blue, blue green to green. Free falling. Still grasping at nothing. I may not be alone. From nearby, I hear voices engaging in a conversation. I yell, I wait, but there is no reply as I approach my demise.

Snapshots flipping by in my mind, replaying my being, my past one frame at a time, the good, the bad, and regrets. Like seeing my world on a 3-D View-Master. A single frame, click another followed by another and… I fall as unfamiliar shapes form. Coming into focus.

How to describe my essence in one word you ask, monochromatic. Each day a repeat of the last. I’ve given nothing to the world. They did not invite me to enter the universe, I just am. I’m just filling space, occupying time until I am not. One purpose, do my job, and move on. I have few friends; we share common experiences, but they have deserted me.

I never met my parents. A mash of pigments, my heritage unknown, eventually adopted, placed in a home of caring parents, giving me value.

As I fall, I see shapes, overlapping bands of blue with green serrated edges outlining the shapes. Is this where it all ends? Shaken awake this morning, gathered my thoughts planning on an uneventful day. No plans scheduled, but now watching folks arriving carry cases on their way to work, pulling rolling boxes, hustling here and there. Conversations, muffled, “how was your week?”

“Fine thanks, and yours?”

“So busy. I need this break. Looking forward to today, some tranquility.”

They are here to see my end. What is wrong with this picture? My irrevocability in their hands.

“I know what you mean, here let me help you move this workbench for a better view.”

Tables now being set up, large canvas blankets on tables appearing, bottles and jars, tubes filling the space fuzzy beyond my view, sticks laid out with care. Care, no one seems to care about me, my fate. The form filling my view, my future inevitably determined, quietus assumed. In a moment, eternal rest.

A voice nearby asks, “What is it?”

“A succulent.”

“What kind?”

“A Blue Green Aloe Vera plant.”

What! I’m falling into a cactus. This is where it all ends!

Splat!

“So lifelike.”

Here I lie. I see bright lights. Figures in white smocks surround me. Voices. My inners splattered about, dabbed, wet. Surrounded by relatives. Somehow alive. Bodies pass by, bending to get a closer look. Staring. Squinting. Nodding. Eventually ignored.

We are being moved, sharing a common fate. Displayed. White smocks approaching, pointing, tilting heads, blathering, then gone. They have moved on while now suspended, like some object, left behind while voices fade.

Once nothing existed, only conceptually. Then created joining the masses, mixed heritage, members of a community, surviving while the world passed by. Then individualize, pulled out from the exposition, one of many fulfilling a task out of our control, by outsiders, who judge my value, my arrangement, my final disposition.

I have become a spectacle. Critiqued by strangers.

Someone is approaching. Someone removing a white smock, covered with blotches, unrecognizable, then buried in a box. An artiste observing for a moment, head tilted, reaches, extracts me, us, now headed toward a portfolio more voices ask, “is it finished?”

The last words heard, “I may give it away or just stacked with others.”

My world goes dark. I am being rolled away to an unknown terminus.