Death

He had forgotten how the grass smelt. 

The impact should have made him feel the pain. But usually, it takes time to catch up. This one was taking unduly long. The smell of the grass was stronger than all other perceptions. Childhood. Youth. After that, he must have never come this close. The breeze swayed the light buds on the tips. The crickets were alive. He didn’t remember hearing them just a moment back when he was still on his feet. 

Why was the pain still not catching up?

The ground was inviting. It wasn’t as hard as it had seemed. Like his mother’s lap, was it? He couldn’t say. That was years ago. Too many indexes before that memory could be accessed. 

He put his ear on the ground. Deep inside, he could sense the earth breathe. There was an unmistakable slow heaving. He turned his eyes to look at space. The sun was going down. It reminded him of someone. But he couldn’t recall. The blue of the sky felt like compassion. His breath was slowing down when he began to see space continue through the ground. Beyond the ground. The fields that bent Time. Countless of them. Was he hallucinating?

Nothing was making sense. He looked back at the grass. The only thing that still looked like grass. But even that now seemed like parts of his own.

Part of everything that was one. 

Him. Everything was a part of him. 

He didn’t know what it was, he was resisting, but that resistance was melting.

In the slowly rising peace, the crickets in the grass felt symphonic. 

He had to hurry to latch on to something. To take back along. A fellow, a thing, a memory to travel with. He did not know if he was going back somewhere or starting on a new one. 

The strand of the grass was all he could think of. It seemed like him. Happy and alive. On a short journey. The sun and the earth looked like they had longer ones. They looked tired and stretched. There were more in the Field, waiting to flower. Many more suns and earths and unmanifest ‘Will’.

He didn’t know what else to call it. 

While he still had a mind, he suddenly felt he had to thank someone for his little stint of free will. There was no time to judge if he had used it well. He drowned his gratitude in the slowly engulfing silence. 

As his eyes, still open, lost the last scintillations of light, the cosmos revealed to him, its infinite white. Or was it black? It did not matter. Did it?