The Beginning:

I suppose you could say that I am dreaming. I am hanging by my feet from a rope and I am surrounded by nothing and everything at once and there are trees and bushes and green things as far as my eyes can see. High above me, almost invisible against the gray clouds, is a steel-colored bridge and from here it looks delicate and beautiful when I know that it is a monster up close. My feet feel like they’re slipping, but I hold on to faith and wait for someone to come for me, trying not to think about the hundreds of feet of gorge beneath me. And then suddenly, there is a snap and a yell and I am falling, dropping down away from the light and away from the sound and I can’t see. Its dark everywhere and I can’t move and I am stuck I am trapped and I can’t get out…and the pain! I have never felt such intense pain in my life and I know I am screaming bloody murder, oh God oh God oh God, and it's boiling me alive and I must be dying...

I wrench myself free and realize I am in bed, my feet caught in the rope that my sheets have become in my few hours of fitful sleep. I kick them aside, wait for my heartbeat to slow. It does, but the pain is still there. I press my palms against my chest and struggle to breathe.

--Where does it hurt?--

I am startled by a voice and look to my right and there is a child standing there and she is so beautiful but so sad and I want to touch her curly black hair which somehow exudes light by which I see her pale lovely face…
But instead of touching her, I answer.

--It hurts. It hurts everywhere. Who are you?--

She opens her mouth to respond, but closes it as though she has thought of something else. She takes a step closer to the bed and in the light of her luminous hair I see her eyes and they are green, piercing, cat-like eyes and I suddenly feel like she is looking right through me, reading me down to my base pairs, right down to all the lies I have ever told that are harbored in my kneecaps and my toes and my fingertips and then she is on the bed and is kneeling beside me, peering into my face. She raises one of her soft hands and I watch it as she slowly lifts it up level with my eyes. And then, slowly, she places her small fingers on my forehead and whispers to me with wisdom beyond her years…with wisdom beyond any possible lifetime. She whispers.

And then suddenly my vision is flooded with clear blue light and I am falling falling falling down away from this perfect child who I notice has a scar on her chin from where she was cut in an accident by a piece of breaking glass and I don’t know how I know this but I’m falling back into darkness that turns into blinding white and then I am somewhere warm. I can’t see, but this time I don’t worry. I am warm and I feel safe and I decide that this, this must be the womb and I am back, returned here to where someone is taking care of me and I have no worries, no pain, no horrible dreams of death and sadness and…

Then I am awake, back in my kaleidoscope bedroom with its colors and photographs and montages of life. I stretch and decide to get up, but not just yet because I am cozy here and I am safe here now in time where I am solid and real and as invincible as I am vulnerable, waiting for life to change and the world to take me by the hand and show me the way. And I know it will never happen.

I feel compelled to see my hands, to note their existence and their dexterity, and I pull them out from under the pillow where they have been curled into fetal fists all night and here they are, whole and full of promise of the future.

But there is something different.

--Where does it hurt?--

On the thumb of my right hand, right above the joint crease closest to the top, there is something there that was not before. It is tiny, its shape just barely discernable, but I see it. It is a star, perfect and beautiful and it is mine and I know it will never fade, no matter how many times it is scrubbed and no matter how old or young my hands become it will be there, reminding me. Telling me that pain comes and goes. And people move on. They grow. They become new again. And sometimes it’s good. And sometimes it’s bad. And sometimes the ending refuses to come and you are left there.

And you are waiting. Waiting for the page to turn. Waiting for the curtain to fall and for the narrator to say, in a deep and omnipresent voice,

--The End--

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And so it ends. An ode to endings and conclusions.