The stick trembles in my grasp, brittle as memory itself. I’ve held it before – or perhaps I haven’t. Time flows strangely now, like watercolors bleeding into one another, past and present swirling in abstract patterns across my consciousness.

“You shouldn’t be up,” Sarah’s voice drifts from somewhere behind me. My daughter – no, my caretaker. The roles have reversed so many times I can no longer keep track.

“I need to remember,” I whisper, clutching the frail branch closer. Its bark crumbles slightly beneath my fingers, much like the fragments of my former life disintegrating at the edges.

“Remember what, Eleanor?” Sarah moves into view, her face a kaleidoscope of ages – sometimes the child I raised, sometimes the woman who now tends to me. The sunlight through the window catches her hair, and for a moment, I see my mother there instead.

“The tree,” I say. “The one that gave me this branch. It stood in the garden of my childhood home – or perhaps it will stand there, someday. Time isn’t… quite right anymore.”

Sarah’s expression softens. “The medications might be making you confused again.”

But I shake my head, because she doesn’t understand. How could she? The dying stick in my hands is both ancient and unborn, a paradox of existence that mirrors my own state. Since the accident – was it yesterday? Tomorrow? – I’ve lived countless lives in the space between heartbeats.

“I died, you know,” I tell her matter-of-factly. “Under that tree. But also by the sea, in a hospital bed, in my sleep at ninety-three. Each time, I returned here, to this moment, with this stick.”

Sarah reaches for my hand, but I pull away. The stick must not fall. It’s my anchor, my compass in the tempestuous sea of overlapping realities.

“The doctor said these episodes might happen,” she murmurs, more to herself than to me. “That the trauma might manifest in unusual ways.”

I laugh, and the sound ripples across decades. “Trauma? Oh no, dear one. This isn’t trauma – it’s liberation. Each death brings new understanding, each rebirth adds another layer to the palimpsest of existence.”

The stick suddenly feels warm in my hands, pulsing with an inner light that only I can see. Its fragility transforms into something else entirely – not weakness, but potential. Like a butterfly’s chrysalis, delicate yet harboring immense change.

“Watch,” I whisper, and before Sarah can stop me, I snap the stick in two.

The world fractures with it. Reality splinters into a thousand glittering shards, each one reflecting a different version of my life. But this time, instead of being pulled into another cycle of death and rebirth, I remain present, watching as the pieces reform into something entirely new.

Sarah gasps beside me, and I realize she can see it too – the broken stick floating in mid-air, its pieces connecting with threads of light, forming a complex pattern that resembles a map of the universe.

“Mom?” she whispers, her scientific skepticism crumbling in the face of the impossible.

I smile, finally understanding. “The stick wasn’t weak after all. It was just waiting for the right moment to become something else entirely.”

The light engulfs us both, and as reality reshapes itself around us, I hear Sarah’s laughter mixing with my own – the sound of boundaries breaking, of understanding blooming, of transformation unleashed.

We are all fragile sticks, until we choose not to be.