Intangible

”I’m going to shine brighter than any star!”

That fragile smile, like a delicate flower, all too innocent and just out of reach. Now, it seems as though I can only appreciate it from afar through a halation of hazy, misted memories, lest I dare put it at risk of my corrosive touch. How could I ever afford anything this precious? Anything so wonderful, so endearing, so… good… would of course be too good to be true. Much like an intangible echo of a dream, it cannot be held, cannot be embraced, cannot be possessed.

“I’ll make it come true, you’ll see!”

Yet even amongst the most spirited of possessions, a subtle incorporeality, a haunting regret from beyond the grave, seems to possess my mind as I descend into the fiery pit. Occupying the remaining corners left of my flickering consciousness like water finding its path down an icy mountain. A high so numbing, perhaps I may not even need oxygen anymore. What is there left for me to make sense of anyway?

“Are you watching, Papa?”

The sweltering heat intensifies as I near inch by inch. I try to hyperventilate, yet there is no air for me to breathe in. I try to scream, yet there is no air in my lungs to expel. I struggle with all my might, yet everything simply passes through my immaterial self. The flames engulf me whole, yet my nerve endings won’t burn or dull nor will my brain or heart melt. I suppose this kind of eternal suffering, this ceaseless agony akin to a hellish, divine judgment, is my fate now.

I feel the hearth of the planet wrap around me as my futile flailing slows, my limbs gliding through the mantle of the Earth. The panic that consumed me when I initially began sinking no longer remains; there’s a certain peace and calm to the warmth of the Earth’s core, slowly drawing and pulling me closer and closer into its gravitational web. Maybe, this is just what I deserve for trying to touch the untouchable, my punishment for trying to grasp at that hazy dream, that misty smile.