The Hollow Girl (a poetic prose experiment)

She can only breathe at high speeds.

It’s not the movement, it’s the standing still. Stillness only comes with light-speed, she’s decided. The stillness is the infinitesimal point at which anything is possible, the potential pause, the rushing, breath-taking eternity in the in-between;

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act …

Darkness hides the reality, blurring the lines and blurring her vision, allowing the perception of greater speed. Trails of light echo loudly across the windshield, as she pushes the accelerator harder, further, faster.

The hour grows later, and the lights grow fewer.

Dusk has long since abandoned the world, replaced by the velvet emptiness, the vast ephemeral space of the night. Suffocating silence is sucked out of her head, into the ether.

She pushes the accelerator flat to the floor.

Wind roars; doors rattle; engine screams.

She can almost breath.

Inhales.

Anticipation crescendoes; she can see it already, and she almost smiles.

A curve in the road, trees reach out to her, she closes her eyes, opens them, to eternity. The overwhelming silence is obliterated in a split-second scream of rending metal and glass. The overwhelming silence is obliterated, replaced with the welcome comfort of one last breath…

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends…

… one last breath, in which she takes in the entirety of existence.

Exhales.