closed my eyes not to remember , mark , or flag this time for the future , but to ask that he be released from the bonds of time without suffering further . To no longer hear the struggle for breaths that kept coming . To end this prolonged death for him as much as for myself . To cure the beaded sweat on his brow and heal the cracked dryness of his lips . I asked to ease those hours where I will be cursed to jump back to this moment again and again . To forever bounce between my bookmarks in time . To relive them in the heat of the night when the summer breeze has died and the sheets stick to my back like filo . For when the humid air binds in my lungs and chokes me until I find myself again . I woke with the crust of sleep sticking my eyelashes together .
Quinn Ponds lives in Arizona , where she received her education in psychology from The University of Phoenix and now works in the behavioral and mental health field . Though she had a poem published in The PHiX , a magazine in Phoenix , this is her first publication of fiction .
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