Focus

When death came for me, I welcomed it like the arms of love. My passing came with the ease of knowing nothing. That is the trickery of life. You come into the world knowing nothing; grow to know something, maybe everything; then die realizing you know nothing. For the unfortunate, their lives are snuffed out too soon while they still believe they know it all. I don't envy them nor the torment of their passing. And who am I to judge, not just the knowledge of others, but the brutality of their deaths; I'm humbly no one. I'm sure an escape from an impoverished life filled with overcome obstacles would add a certain level of bravado to my rambles, but that's another's story. My story is subtle and quiet; dare I say, invisible.

I was born, and that is roughly all you need to know of my childhood. My journey didn't begin until I was too old for playgrounds and crushes. It didn't start with a death or a birth; it didn't start with a crumbling marriage or a lost love. It began on a Tuesday, a bright sunny Tuesday, when I was in my late thirties. Why did this Tuesday start my path? For no other reason, then all journeys need a start, and this particular Tuesday was just as ordinary as all the days that preceded it and all the days that followed it.

The mundane is a maze that all people must battle; trials of boredom and sepsis of inspiration mar every moment. That Tuesday, an anxious tap of my pen vanquished the tedium. Maybe I was in the dreamy cloud of a daze, or perhaps the air was unusually thick, but I watched wide-eyed as the air around my twitching pen rippled like the gentle wrinkles of a rock skipping across a tranquil lake. A visual representation that I'd never been focused enough to witness before. But now, in-tune with this uncommon level of focus, it was not just the pen. All unseen forces of energy presented in the swells of a liquid; the wisp of a gentle breeze appeared as a translucent curtain, the push of a moving car collected transparent snow, and even the sway of a body caused a dry current.

I recall a long blink to clear my eyes, but the phenomena persisted. "Too much coffee," I thought to myself as I swished my head back and forth in a flawed attempt to clear my mind of this new infliction. Of course, this movement only caused a swirl as though I were beneath the water of a warm bath. "I must be sick," I rationalized as I began to gather my things. Even this created a series of tails from each movement.

As I made my way home, the vibrations began to take on personalities; the childish tickles of a passerby, the dance of a gentle breeze, even the abrasive plume of a passing bus all combined into a visual symphony. I enjoyed my stroll and newfound sight, but like all nameless marvels, the devil soon tarnished the virtue.

A small child hypnotized me; he couldn't have been more than 4. His legs and arms, chubby in anticipation of his next growth spurt, pumped as he ran around his mother in the park. She giggled in a high trill at her beautiful boy, enjoying the warmth of the July sun. But my eyes were pulled from the serenity by the violent push and pull of an invisible laser foretelling the future. My arms pumped through the thick soup of gravity as I struggled to reach him. My screams only elicited a confused look from the bemused mother and the little boy too naïve to sense warning in such a pleasant setting, but it was coming.

I reached him; the tangible touch of his soft limbs relieved the panic deep in my core. It only required the shift of a few inches to remove him from the path. The moment of confusion by the boy and mother was quickly dissuaded as a near-by street vendor lurched. His eyes were frozen in the panic of surprise as his hands clutched his rounded stomach. A slow sickly seep of red grew larger with each heartbeat as he crumbled to the ground. I could see the waves of his fall, but the screams were muted. I knew there was only one bullet singing through the air, only one laser to dodge. The frantic clawing of the mother for her child brought me back. Hysterical thanks filled the air as the boy slipped from my arms to his mother's with a small swish.

But the thanks would not sink into me like the swells around the lifeless man. His frantic last breath burned into my memory, a life taken too soon. My hands assisted his fall. I hadn't thought of the impact of my actions. Even as I could see the gentle sway of a butterfly's wings, I had forgotten the basic principle of the effect; with every action, there is an equal reaction.

Insanity crumbled my mind as I lay awake that night. The darkness was the solace I needed; pitch blackness. It supplied calming blindness to the ebbs and flows of movement, but it couldn't damper the twisted face of a man's last breath.