Marks and Markers

Photo copyright Wings, 2016; all rights reserved.

Seven years.

And one year.

The former is a marker of how long the little man above has been gone. Animikiins: Little Thunder Being, also known as Little Dude, Little Man, Big Man, and Little Big Man, that last being every kind of inside joke it sounds like. He was with us only parts of six days before we could get him to the vet, who insisted there was no hope. He looked up at me, then deliberately curled into my arms on the table and went to sleep even before the needle entered the room. The most pure kind of trust I've ever seen has come from my dogs.

It took weeks for Griffin to forgive me. I assume that Animikiins has been showing him the ropes of his new world.

The latter is a different sort of marker, one that has recorded — and inflicted — a great many more marks. I suppose it was fitting, in its own way, that the two should fall on the same date, a date that, as Tumblr has helpfully reminded me, marks the "first birthday," as they put it, of The Interstices. The place where I write my fiction that really mostly isn't fiction at all.

The place where my words go to die.

I don't talk about most of it directly. But it's all there for anyone who bothers to read; it's not that tough to put it all together. Not the details, a lot of them; they're too much even for me. But anyone who wanted the big picture — or even a snapshot of a given day — could find it easily enough. 

I get it.

A year. And seven years.

The marks aren't just pixels on a screen. They're carved into my flesh and bone, my heart and spirit. Wounds that don't heal, don't really even scar.

Sometimes the pain gets to be a bit much.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.