Madame Mysticant of the                   , Last of the Spinning Gypsies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some days she can swear they see her, but she can’t be sure.

 

She enjoys their smell most of all—aromatic with the essence of the Living, sometimes so overwhelming as to unstitch her from her stool.

 

The whiff of a family especially, so pungent. Like the sun trapped inside her nostrils. Secret seasons bristling beneath the rind of an orange peel.       Gift beyond gifts.

 

But there is a cost—every heaven laced with a little hell (for how else would one recognize it as heaven?): she suffers the visions, feels everything as they walk past. Her Horoscapes she calls them, for lack of a scientific term.                

        

Surely there are worst albatrosses to bear (she supposes) when the futures come flooding in. Surely there are worst ways to spend an eternity.

 

It's funny but inevitable perhaps: How easily the Living take their living for granted. Not their fault, she knows. You just don't know what you've got until it's gone. You can't know. But when it's gone, then you know.

 

And when you're gone, it is more than enough to bear witness. To sense it around you. To remember what it was to feel rain slapping your skin, same as sunlight on your face. Love, hate, hope: the brief but undeniable somethingness and burden of Being.