The Chase

She chases me around the garden, and I laugh.  It reminds me of a better time.  A simpler time.  Playing kiss chase as adults seemed so frivolous, so joyful.  It caught us up with things we felt we had missed.  The twin desires, to be caught, to elude, replacing the confusion of our youth: why would you want a boy to catch you, anyway?

Chase is probably too strong a word for it.

It implies speed, which is something she no longer posseses, my love.

Garden, also, might lead you to imagine something which isn't exactly the same as the space in which this scene occurs, unfolding daily like a flower's petals.

Each morning I peer through the peephole.  She doesn't rise before dawn, that much hasn't changed, even with everything else.  I slip through the door quietly, but never quietly enough.  She lurches awake, swaying unsteadily on her feet.  She told me that as a cadet the instructors always said that a human being couldn't sleep standing up.  She does, now.  I back away, keeping close to the wall.  Her arms aren't long enough to reach me over the rail fence I've put up around the oval space.

I jog around the edge of the space, careful to keep out of her grasp.  I worry about her, but not like everyone else does.  I worry that she is becoming clumsier, less mobile, even with our daily exercise.  Each day she lumbers a little more.

Then her foot turns awkwardly in the dirt and she falls.  Her outstretched arms break her fall, though not through any volition on her part.  The left folds under her with a horrifying crunch, and she tumbles.

She tumbles, and she rolls. 

She rolls under the rail.

And suddenly, the chase isn't a game.