Jeweler

***

He kept on watching. And watching, and watching, and watching, and watching. As if staring into something that had no end — and shouldn’t have had a beginning in the first place. The window stretched across an entire wall. That’s what a panorama looks like. And he was small and tiny, so tiny like a cloud, and so vast like a cloud. Already such a grown person. Grown beyond millennia, in this very moment. The rain fell hard, like it had a point to prove. And there was nothing but that and the world, stretching maybe ten paces out at best. A whole planet was unfolding out there behind the glass. All for him. So sharp in its seductiveness. Blue, nearly sapphire. It was waiting for him. He always knew that. That planet had forged him fourteen years ago, and now he’d grown — and was ready to carry it on his cliff-shoulders like a duty. A weapon of first necessity. All his strength, these fourteen guileless years, had lived inside approval. Now he needed no one's approval — he had eternity waiting. The revolutions of one simple, seamless orb of perfect form, belonging only to his desire. His strength has been living in helplessness. His life has been enlosing in his father. But now his father was dead. He looked all wrong dead. Like plasticine. Molded, kind of. No, that wasn’t Dad. That definitely wasn’t Dad. Dad’s eyes were big and green, and this man’s were hidden, veiled. Dad’s nose looked more like a potato than a tomato, and this man’s didn’t look like anything at all. Fake. His dad wasn’t like that. His dad would never have done that to himself. Would never have allowed it. His dad had no right to make a mistake. No right to be tired. For that — penalty in the weight of shattered knuckles. For that — shame. His dad would never die. He existed outside of time and space. He was just — outside. He’d never really been here. But he’d never died either. Because his dad was immortal. Billy knew that for a fact. So now, standing face to face with the anemic chalk-toned body hovering just beyond the glass, he knew: now, for sure, Dad would never die. He would seal him up inside himself and protect him till his last breath. That body hanging by a thread of rope — that was just a formality. Because now he could feel his father more than ever. And life cleaved itself clean in half. And the planet beneath his feet was perfectly round. And he — was perfect. Because now he was becoming eternal. And that was perfection. It was March.