I close my eyes and I am drifting, distantly, beneath the waves of a sapphire ocean. Just drifting. I can feel my arms and legs moving, just enough, to keep me from sinking. I can sense them, like dull heavy things moving of their own accord. Limbs that I know are mine, but seem like they’re not. I exhale. And open my eyes.
The only sight for miles on end is the rich blue color of the water and the bubbles of my breath as they slip, slowly, from my mouth towards the surface. I draw in a breath. How peculiar that I can still breathe. It feels like air, only heavier and thick, like inhaling the water, but not drowning. It is more pure than any air I have ever tasted. And the feeling of its weight in my lungs is rich and cleansing.
And there is my hair. My hair is swirling in my face. Long tendrils reaching away and back again like brownish-blond tentacles seeking to grasp something that seems just out of its reach in this watery world. My hands move, as if in slow motion, to brush its silky smoothness back from my eyes so I can see more of this endless ocean.
There is nothing, as though the artist of this world forgot the fish and coral, and millions of little things that belong here. I blink. Still, nothing. I look down, the blue fading into blackened depths. Upwards. I can see the sun glowing, fractured beams of it warmth skewing across the tides.
How, I wonder, is it that I’m here? I’m not afraid. That’s strange, since fear is my closest companion. Yet here I am, this lone figure floating on a blue canvas. And there is nothing that’s weighing on my mind, stretching its thoughts a million and one different ways. The cloak of fear I carry, that makes me want to curl in on myself, has fallen away and I feel as though I can stretch out for the first time. Amazing. It’s so strange that I’ve never felt this way before.
I inhale again. Excitement swells in my heart with a rush of adrenaline. I feel like swimming, moving freely and without the weight and burdens of my life to make me sink. And I swim. Going forward, yet nowhere at the same time. The water rushing over my skin feels like silk sheets, smooth and comforting. My legs are kicking with all their might towards some unknown goal.

And then I close my eyes again, and I am running, full force. The wind whips my hair behind me, stray locks lashing lightly at my cheeks. The ground beneath my feet is loamy. Damp and slightly cool. I can smell the musty richness of it all. My eyes fly open and I am met with a vibrant display of nature. Beautiful. I am running down a forest path. Midnight surrounds me. Tall trees cast ethereal shadows on my face, the moon in the sky twinkling through their branches like some charmer watching me from across a crowded room. I smile to myself at his debonair ways of wooing me.
This world is quiet, save for the soft chirp of crickets and the roar of wind as it rushes over my face. I slow to a walk, breathless and panting, but not stopping. My lungs gasping in the salty taste of the air. I’m alive. I have never felt so alive. My fingers wipe the sweat from my cool brow. And I am still free of those burdens that absorbed my life. The pursuit of the perfections. Agonizing. Hurting myself so that some other persons opinion of me is pleasing to my ears. There is no one here for me to please but myself.
The trees break and the world opens up into a field of tall grass that stretches on long past the horizon. The blades tickle my arms and legs as I pass them by, like the lives of the people I have brushed by in my lifetime. Lives less or not as important as my own. I sigh and fall down into the grass. And there is light. Hundreds of disturbed fireflies ignite like miniscule lanterns and fly off to safer places. Above me. They are like the stars, each a tiny, glorious burning presence.
As they clear, it is like a curtain lifting and suddenly the charmer has returned. His silvery smile full and broad as he watches me. Silently. His twinkling moonbeams washing over my small body like a lover’s silent kisses. With him I can share all my secrets. I can reveal all the little things I used to hide. The quirks. Abnormalities. The unacceptable parts of a human life that are locked away inside a box within our souls. Cherished parts, or sometimes despised parts. Taken out behind closed doors in absolute privacy, and rolled around and around in our hands until they are worn smooth by time. Then, returned to the box until its safe to remove them again. Unknown inner turmoil’s that slowly eat and consume us from inside out. All in the pursuit of some vanity we are told we must have. Here, there are no needs for such locked boxes.
My fingers gently bend the blades of grass beneath my hands as I empty my own box. My new secret holder just listening. My mute beau. Withholding all judgment of me. I breathe out, more heaviness leaving me. And the inner darkness that formed a shell around my soul has cracked and broken, leaving nothing but a calm purity behind. I am renewed. Revived. Suddenly I’m on my feet again.
They carry me, so light that it seems that they only skim the ground. Faster and faster. Towards the horizon. The grass shortens and thins until it is sparse and barely ankle high. Before me, a cliff juts out proudly. I approach the edge and stare down. The height is so great that I cannot see the ground below it. I have no fear. No worries about how I may appear. I turn, my back facing the emptiness. The moon winks my way. I wink back and blow a tender farewell kiss his way. And I push myself backwards. My arms thrust out away from my sides.

Once more I close my eyes and I am falling. Gravity pulls me down and down. I don’t know how far below the ground may be or how quickly I might meet it. The feel of the wind is refreshing as it passes over my skin, its sound like a small whistle being blown in my ears. And I look inwards for a strength that I suddenly realize is there. An inner strength put on the back burner of my being, for it conflicts with the role cast upon me by my worlds society.
Again, there is no need for such a thing here. This weakness of my role, an act thrust upon my person from very early in my youth. And it boils beneath my skin and rises, as goose bumps on my flesh. Tiny prickling at the surface. Once held in by the subliminal training of my mind, the inner strength fights. It fights against everything I’ve ever known was true, was force fed into believing without knowing that it was being jammed down my throat.
And it lashes out. So much strength rushing out of me that I stop midair and drift, like a feather held aloft by an updraft of wind. A human feather glowing in the midnight sky. My freedom is complete. All the societal burdens that once constrained my very being have gone away in a rush of surreal experience. A glorious surrealism. I lash out with my strength again, and suddenly I can fly. Truly weightless now.
Like a bird, or perhaps like Peter Pan, my own trueness willing my flight across a now amber cast sky. I roll over, smoothly like a plane and I can see the world beneath me. A world truly spectacular. A world that is all mine and no one else. My free world. I push on towards the sunrise. The sun a heavy gold-orange coin pushing out of the ground, almost like a flower growing reaching out to bloom.
The world it illuminates is rich, with blond cornfields and emerald woods. Deep valleys that curve smoothly down and up again. Jagged, ruddy gorges splashed with radiant colors and shades too many of which to name. Rivers that follow the lay of the land. And the sweet purity of the air. The soft scent of an unspoiled planet. Nothing here can harm or destroy what it is now.

My eyes are closed again and I am standing. Still and trembling. Garbled angry noise filling my ears and making me grimace. A heavy scent overwhelms me and I am choking. Choking on exhaust and cigarette smoke. My eyes peek open, blinded by the intensity of towering buildings made of glass and concrete that fracture the sunlight and devastate me. I stand on a corner of a busy street. Cars rushing past kicking up the filth of the city. Horns blaring from a short patience.
People swelling in around me, swallowing me up into the crowd. Wheezing and gasping from the stench. Sirens wail and children cry, lost souls in a world with little empathy for their plight. Drowned out by the pounding loudness all around. I feel heavy. Weakened. Slowly loosing what I had just gained.
My fear cloak rises up from the nothingness where it fell and enshrouds me. Its collar choking me and weighing me down in some unforgiving manner. As if angry for casting it aside. And I with my boldness can feel eyes boring into me from all directions. People gazing at me with their critical eyes as though they are better than me. Unaware that they too receive the same scrutiny of their character. My soul box clicks open and draws in all the things I should be hiding. More weight is thrust upon me.
And I am anonymous among the throng. Mobs of people brushing past me and others. Lives touching for brief moments that pass without any care or acknowledgement of the other party. Soon to be passing ghosts in my life, as I will be in theirs. I cling to all the things I have shed away. My strength gone. I am weak. A pitiable person standing idly by on a street corner.
And I am dirty, covered in the grime of my sins and secrets. Unclean from living a life denying, loathing, what I’ve been given. Such filth that not even the strongest of soaps or chemicals can wash away from me. Filth that clings the very essence of my soul. I fold in upon myself. Crumple. Into a ball of a person not worthy of all the selfish desires I harbor, deep within the recesses of my mind.
I weep. Weep for such beautiful things lost within the blink of an eye. Lost in a few brief moments of darkness. My breath is ragged. The noise, the clutter of this petulant, spiteful world is closing in on me. I want to scream but my voice is likely to be lost, drowned out by the sound of the rest of the world screaming along side me. Wandering aimlessly. Powerlessly. No determined direction, or bravery, or purity of soul, or strength to guide us on our way. Such things we have shed ages ago in the pursuit of power and dominance. I close my eyes, tight, and am determined to find my way back to them again.