Not Another Day In The Machine.

I

A sparklerman zig-zagged across the skies, re-arranging stars in its path. How bright his stick-like and jaggy limbs twinkle, I noticed; even noticing my surprise. No longer 'simply sitting', I was.

'It is time' I mumbled. The room was melting, silently paint-stripped to a unsteady canvas. Sinking, I tipped forwards, falling towards the growing void, swallowing cold terror and finally exuding relief.

'What time?' I heard her ask, as she lay asleep on our bed. She was staring deep into me, across my discarnate shell. At the window, the sparklerman had been and was gone.

'Now' I said, daring her stare even deeper, as a last act of rebellion from my newly found despair. Might we might have awoken then, and turned out to be alive, we could have started tearing each other to pieces again, but this was no longer love.

There were no pieces. No light, no day, no time.
Out of the machine, there was nothing.