The Last Time I Held Him

If I had slept ten minutes, I had slept a lifetime.

At first, I dreamt of black, of the void. Then a great drum, red and skinned with hide, began to beat, and I heard joy. Such joy as to be unfathomable, and I cried.

The drum was everything, and yet would undo me. I realised it was everything because it had replaced all other dreams. Its beat had brought on time suspended by youth and made me a gardener, in old age, tending to weeds in anticipation of some verdent spring.

My own heart beat in time with the drum, and I remembered that its force is a fire I kindled myself. When I fade, and the garden blooms, I will echo in the beat of that drum.