Bone Smoke

There is smoke in my bones. That is how I feel when I stand between the worlds and wait. In that nonexistent place, the purgatory of the multiverse. I can feel the tease of that smoke curling round and round my skeleton. My limbs twitch at its touch and each twitch is a world, a time, a person.

Besides the smoke there is nothing. Other walkers see the inside of their heads, nightmare woods or childhood homes. I see nothing, not even blackness, only blankness and lack. No words can describe it because to that place no word comes. They say I see the between place as it truly is, but I know that it truly is not.

I think of turning and of walking forward. I think of reaching for a world, not a green and grey marble, but all the weaving life and death and history, all the complexity that makes up a planet. I think of pulling myself to that world.

And I am there, standing on pavement in a sea of concrete. The nothing that is less than nothing is like a dream that I can dream again. This world exists. The cracks in the sidewalk beneath my feet will not let me believe in not existing.

But the smoke in my bones never leaves. It twists and teases. It leads me on, and I must follow.