A very short noon

I sat on the terrace, watching as people walked like ants scurrying for the next objective. They are examplary beings. Boredom clear as day on my face, something caught my eye. In the middle of the scramble, I saw the figure of a woman using the arm of a young man as walking stick. Her back arched, shoulders trembling, her steps as a tortoise. Her faced sagged, body faded like an overwhelmed clothe, skin folded like an hurriedly wrapped book.

My heart thumped rapidly against my chest. It was excruciatingly painful. My hands shook terribly as i tried to rub the ache away. I would look like this one day, the last leaf hanging at the end of a lifeless tree. My ears tingled and tightened, even as cruel and dead as the world was, I couldn't bear to think of the day I would leave this abyss, buried six feet under, my breath grasped from my reach.