When Dreams Die ...

Everyone just stood there looking on as one by agonising one the nails were rammed into the coffin with silent empathy - sealing within it the fate of its occupant. With slow and deliberate precision the hammer rained blow upon blow on the defenseless nail driving in the reality that there was no looking back.

Twenty-four nails in all were used. Twenty-four!! The last four stubbornly refusing to go in. The ferocity of the strikes increased twisting, disfiguring and forcing submission.

It lay there dying in the sun smiling at the faces that looked down on it and wishing that the tears that fell on it had come sooner…about four or so nails ago. Now the tears just watered the soil making it easier to dig…helping the process along.

The hole was ready.

After twenty-four years, this last journey of six feet didn’t seem so far down. It did not matter. These six feet was the culmination of a lifetime. Unhappiness was when it was six feet higher. But now it doesn’t give a damn.

Their faces now blotted out the sun. It lay there hoping the sun beats down on them skinning them alive just as it was stripped bare of everything it had held dear…robbed of its life…robbed of its breath.

It liked it there. The soil cradling it in its bosom as it nursed a broken dream, the sky draped as a blanket keeping out the harsh reality, a box cocooning it in everlasting privacy.

The mud was thrown it…reverently, ceremoniously covering it. Twenty-four nails and six feet later, here it was now … finally alone ... finally at peace.

They stuck the tombstone in. A grey stone encompassing in five lines its whole life just as a six by two box did six feet lower. It was down to one last breath. A flower is thrown on the patted down mud, its fragrance trailing away. Six feet lower it ...