"Joseph, Stop!"
And in an instant the chaos of the world stood still for one woman. A heavy clicking of baseball cards marking time against the spokes of a bicycle's wheels ceased to tick. The mutter of a car rolling down the family friendly suburban neighborhood silenced. Freshly mown lawns dotted with old oaks and flower beds rested undisturbed away from the curb and, down the way, water droplets from sprinklers held their breath mid-air. While inside her all came crashing down in deafening calamity.
From the porch where she stood, lemonade in hand, squabbling over the weekly gossip with her neighbor, Joyce, the world became a silent backdrop to the slow moving collision before her. A collision of heart against metal. Her life stolen in the whisper of fate - the timing of a dark man's cloak and scythe. She moved from wood floorboards to cement to grass to pavement. From white to gray to green to red. The splinters of a childhood twisted across a black top and the roaring engine of youth, headlights beaming into a dim future.
She stood there and watched as the slowness of time caught up with her, balancing a cruel universe, like the ocean's currents weaving in and out of the wreckage of a child. And with it the beat of her heart slowed to a faint murmur. Her eyes clouded to the darkness of ages before fire. Hollow breaths, a struggle to survive. The piece of her which lived in the heart of her son. Now gone.
