My dearest love, I grow more transparent with each passing day, less substantial than the dark stone walls that surround me, colder than the gray rock slab I sit upon. Deep inside myself, past skin and muscles, inside organs, the wayward cells glow bright green. They cluster like jade beads at the base of my throat. They leave their glittery trail deep inside my left lung.

Every day, this throat fills and empties with endless chatter and gossip. My life is a nexus of activity: lunches, negotiations, dinners, entanglements. People are charmed at my wit; they fall in love with their projections of me. Alone, I think of you.

This throat holds unshed tears, ghosts of words unspoken. Its beaded green crystals are sculpted from the secrets of a lifetime, from anger, slights, unspoken words. Sometimes the pain rises up inside me and I can sense a swirling abyss beyond.  I swallow sips of wine and begin to feel the delicious nothingness. I inhale cool white smoke that snakes downward caressing every fiber along its way, filling my body with anesthesia and false certitude.

My dearest, once this throat opened to tears, to laughter, to you. Once my throat sang its fullest, truest notes. Together we laughed with the joy of reunion, sobbed with the pain of severance. You are gone, but sometimes at night you seem to draw so close to me. I can hear your voice again, feel your warm hands on my face. They tenderly touch my throat and ease its throbbing. Fear no longer constricts and my throat can speak its peace. Your hands become heated, they burn with your love; they have the strength to melt even the jealous crystals inside me.

Then you fade, and there is nothing to do but to wait, while my throat beads glow brighter. I gave them life and now they are voracious for it; they want to grow into a necklace around my throat, to encircle it tighter and tighter until there is nothing left – no air to breathe, no memory, just a pile of smoldering stones.

(excerpt from “Whitegate,” published by Liz M. Weiman © 2000)