UNCHANGING — a fiction by ollie francis

Sometimes eternity starts too late.

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We would do it together, me and him. It was a kind of natural high, I suppose. Late night, darkness outside, desk lamps and coffee mugs.

He would lean over his books as he read, head supported with one arm, both elbows on the tabletop, one hand idly hung, pulling up a page by its corner, holding in the air, ready to turn.

Pens, highlighters, rulers to keep the underlining straight. There was a kind of energy in it all. While the rest of the world slept, we grew, drawing in everything we could from the paper.

It was better than it sounds.

But it, too, passed. No more shared nighttimes. No more shared notes. Just an empty chair where he had sat.

They say eternity is a good thing; something to live your life for; a future to look forward to. Unchanging. A glorious state, static, still, frozen forever. Wondrous. It probably is. I hope it is and I’ll keep waiting for it, ever just around the corner.

But sometimes, when I’m alone in bed and the dark branches tap at my window, I wonder if — even now, even if it happens right now and this world falls away into the forever and it starts right now — even then, I wonder if eternity will have begun too late.

Originally published on Tumblr

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