34 weeks.
244 days.
2,928 hours.
175,680 minutes.
10,540,800 seconds.
It's strange how very real time can become when you're folding each minute and coloring in every second. Suddenly moments hold names and hours find faces.
It's only when you're standing in your home anchored to the center of your favorite room, flames creeping up the newly painted walls, that you begin to count the number of times you stood there and bitterly curse the times that you just walked through. It's at that moment that every inch of those bright yellow walls crave your attention and you, in turn, crave theirs. Suddenly you'd risk your very life to save that scratch near the far right corner that you made 4 weeks ago. It's now that you're jealous for the empty space on the walls that have been yours for months. It's in this fragmented space in time that you have the audacity to wish you could dream for the emptiness within this small radius.
How long has this fire been breathing through these walls? And how long have you fought to just believe the flames away?
You're faced with a choice; scramble to save this domicile you've known as home... as safe... Or, flee with your life and the few precious belongings that sit within your feeble reach?
You'll run. You have to. But you wont run far. You'll stay close enough to at least feel the heat, to watch it's very last heartbeat. And this burning house won't beg you to stay... It will continue to burn until it's embers can only breathe your name.
But what if you had the choice to stay and watch it fall around you, unable to change anything, but untouched by the flames? Would you stay and watch, coveting every ounce of life and death left in it's bare bones? Or would you choose to leave it behind without looking back, rather seeking what seems to be the impossible courage to one day build again?
I can't say that I'd forsake the chance to remain till the very end... But here we are in skin that can do nothing but be repulsed by the scorching heat. Reality gives us no choice to remain yet survive. Death will not indulge idealism.
Still... There is beauty in these ashes.
