I shrugged, A very long time.
He told me that he had been holding it up for so long yet he had never seen it or, if he had, he could no longer remember what it had looked like.
He sighed a great deep sigh that only old Turtle could sigh.
Are you tired, Old Turtle? I asked.
Sometimes, was his reply. But most times I just wish I could see and feel things as I once did. Old eyes and a tired back...time corrodes us all. Nothing lasts forever.
I nodded my head in agreement and Old Turtle squinted at me through aged yellow eyes.
Everyone carries a world on their back, Short Timer, he said to me. In that, we are all the same.
....
I awake in the morning and it is so still. The tide of my breath and the rhythm of my heart against a background of silence makes me feel a million miles away. A million miles away and still tethered to a single point in time.
I remember that the world still spins and my tapestry is still being spun in shades of golds and blues and grays on an invisible loom. But a new color is being spun too -added to the golds and blues and grays- and it has already begun to change the landscape. I touch my belly and briefly wonder about the possibility beating away there. A waver of hope, too intimidating to contemplate.
Stay. Please stay with us this time.
My mind shifts.
I arch my back. I feel the grind of the weight of my world on my spine. Still there, I think. Always there.
And another day begins.
....
