Blood, Sweat and Tears

The hourglass has been put to good metaphorical use for centuries. Why not? It works. If we consider each grain of sand a minute, hour, day, month or year, we can visualize the passage of time. We understand the general notion deep within our cerebella.

I visualize the hourglass differently today. I see heartbeats falling to silence.

Amazing Woman is dying. And this process of dying, in her case, is gruesome. There are too few feeble heartbeats left. Not that I can be close enough to place ear to breast to hear, or kiss her hand in solace, but no distance is too far or too great to keep a heart from feeling another.

I find myself counting heartbeats, marking each with a tear.

I cried my way through the day today.

I was crying as I straddled the saddle of my bicycle. Not that it was a good day to ride, it wasn’t. It had rained all morning. The storm front passed, shoved aside by a cold north wind. Any other day, I would have gazed out the window and simply marveled at the ferocity. Not today. Today, I wanted to feel that raw fury...to be mercilessly lashed.

I wanted to ride as long and as far as my body could bear. I wanted to ride to exhaustion. I wanted, needed, to feel physical pain the way a tormented soul gouges at a forearm with a razor to displace heartache and torment with blood.

I rode longer and farther than I ever had. I rode straight into that wind. Felt it drive the tears and sweat into my eyes and simply let them burn. Head drooping from exhaustion, feet numb, neck, shoulders and forearms aching, calves on fire, hamstrings cramping, I rode.

The sweat went dry long before the tears.

So spent I was upon return that I collapsed astride the bike. Blood commingled with sweat and tears.

It was not enough.

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