A Dip
The outside world isn’t visible beyond the surface. I am trapped inside a rippling box.
Drifting, weightless.
Sliding and twisting through a crystal-clear labyrinth of colors. The bottom is indistinguishable against the ever-changing haze of blue, but it is there. The shape of my shadow is welcomed by it.
In this shape I see a spirit of its own.
In this shape I see nothing.
In this shape I see everything.
In this shape I see beauty where it hasn’t been recognized before.
I see the calm outline of an infinite being, omniscient, never to share its secrets even if it had a way. For shadows have always been here, each one different but one in the same. Dark and untouchable.
A shadow has borne witness to everything that has ever happened on this world.
In the water my shadow is hazy, as if it would alter and fade into something meaningless at any moment. Like the white crystals reflecting off a billion unseen surfaces, creating patterns on the walls.
Bubbles rise. Sometime I must come back to the surface. Some year...
For it feels as though I’ve been gliding for ages.
Maybe I will rise as a primitive outsider to an impossible environment, left centuries behind by the unstoppable charge of evolution.
Maybe I will rise and keep rising, rising, all the way up to the universes beyond imagination, because I had forgotten the danger of beauty and in it, forgotten time itself; every one of my senses lost to the wonder of the water once and for all.
At every turn, my shadow and I explore a place new and wondrous.
In reality it’s the same path over and over again, but the waves like to play, and at every turn they will find a new path, a unique variation, to make certain my journey back is not the same.
Finally I find the pathway home, though it’s different from what it was last time.
The metallic kiss pulls away from my lips. The burn is gone from my lungs, though it was never really there to begin with, for I had not felt it when the water and I were one. The steps are sun-warmed and rough against my feet.
I have risen.
Nothing has changed except myself.
Drifting, weightless.
Sliding and twisting through a crystal-clear labyrinth of colors. The bottom is indistinguishable against the ever-changing haze of blue, but it is there. The shape of my shadow is welcomed by it.
In this shape I see a spirit of its own.
In this shape I see nothing.
In this shape I see everything.
In this shape I see beauty where it hasn’t been recognized before.
I see the calm outline of an infinite being, omniscient, never to share its secrets even if it had a way. For shadows have always been here, each one different but one in the same. Dark and untouchable.
A shadow has borne witness to everything that has ever happened on this world.
In the water my shadow is hazy, as if it would alter and fade into something meaningless at any moment. Like the white crystals reflecting off a billion unseen surfaces, creating patterns on the walls.
Bubbles rise. Sometime I must come back to the surface. Some year...
For it feels as though I’ve been gliding for ages.
Maybe I will rise as a primitive outsider to an impossible environment, left centuries behind by the unstoppable charge of evolution.
Maybe I will rise and keep rising, rising, all the way up to the universes beyond imagination, because I had forgotten the danger of beauty and in it, forgotten time itself; every one of my senses lost to the wonder of the water once and for all.
At every turn, my shadow and I explore a place new and wondrous.
In reality it’s the same path over and over again, but the waves like to play, and at every turn they will find a new path, a unique variation, to make certain my journey back is not the same.
Finally I find the pathway home, though it’s different from what it was last time.
The metallic kiss pulls away from my lips. The burn is gone from my lungs, though it was never really there to begin with, for I had not felt it when the water and I were one. The steps are sun-warmed and rough against my feet.
I have risen.
Nothing has changed except myself.