From my bedroom window I watch tiny pinpricks of starlight dance defiantly like seraphs on the backs of each crashing wave. Salt water droplets slowly crystalize into random patterns on my window pane and the mild scent of salt water permeates the room.
There is a distinct feeling of anticipation and discovery coursing through the veins of the city tonight: ions displacing air molecules and the iridescent whisper of jetstream confessions bearing witness from the backs of raging Atlantic Ocean waves.
I can feel my body begin the disintegration as I slip silently down the old staircase and into the waiting arms of the city. Concrete alleyways unfold before me in every direction, illuminated by the afterglow of street lamps reaching out like halos from above my head. A single snowflake lands at my feet, a silent harbinger of the storm brewing just beyond the horizon line.
My sneakers kiss asphalt, each step a silent gunshot slicing through the humble streets ahead. It has been years but my grandfather's dying words still echo in my head: "The world feeds on us all . . . "
No one ever told me that growing up would entail having to bear witness to the irreversible decline and inevitable demise of the people that I love. Such is the ironic duality of existence: with every passing second I am dying here in front of you. It is the inescapable curse of every living creature.
And yet, don't we all at some point feel as if we will live forever? That we will outlast the sun, the moon, the stars and all men? Immortality is an unfamiliar architecture to the dead and the dying (and by living are we not dying the slowest of deaths?)
Or all we all just funerals-in-waiting? What is our contribution when the end result is always the same: Inhale, exhale, repeat and die.
My grandfather was correct. The world does, indeed, feed on us all.
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