Her melodious voice carries across the river, hits the shore, bounces back, and I throw my laughter up to the sky. For a brief moment I wonder how far the wave will reverberate. Will it make it to the atmosphere and disintegrate when it runs out of matter to shake? Does it stop when it collides with the edge of this bubble I have created for myself…this place, this time, this moment, in which nothing outside exists? There is nothing but this.
Static rises. Static falls. Perception gives weight to the incalculable pattern scattered amongst the emptiness. Collisions. Vibrations. Noise. I muster everything I can to reach out and make sense of a thing where none naturally lies. Electricity firing. Magnets enacting their force. I feel pulled downward on a slope descending ever further. I am weightless. She calls to me and I hear her, distantly…softly…
(Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV)
“Oh I don’t know. Paint a picture, read a book, travel, meet people. No, god, those are so generic. I want to stand at the base of the ocean at sunrise, feel my feet sink into the sand as the morning warmth hits me. I want to look into space and know the names of all the constellations. I want to reach into history and know why they’re important. And I do want to travel. I want to see the artifacts of people who lived thousands of years before me. I want to see the remnants of their existence and fully understand that while I’m a blip in the universe, there’s a chance that I can affect someone long after I’m gone. I don’t know, I mean, I want to be intangible, separated, but interwoven into the fabric of the universe. I want to be my own entity while maintaining my sense of place.”
The bubble shrinks. Dots of multicolored light blink at the edges of my sight. Everything else blurs together and I can feel my entire body vibrate. I can hear it—the shudder that starts at my head and wiggles its way to my extremities then outward. Time slows. My heartbeat slows. I lose focus. Everything is happening at once. Everything and nothing all together.
Everything and nothing. Everything and nothing.
Now.
Now. Now. Wake up.
“Wow.”
She sighs and kicks her feet, splashing water into the dark.
“I know, I know…it’s such a weird thing to complain about.”
“That is not at all what I meant—”
“I mean, there are people dying, or not sure if they’ll make it through the night and I’m concerned because I don’t like my job. I don’t feel special. Because I’m not happy. I’m not happy…”
I look to the waves and watch as the water washes over itself. Debris. From there to here. A to B. Consider the leaf turned. Then turned again. And again. And again. Ad infinitum. Constant revolution.
(Part I, Part II)
No, it’s fine. It is. It’s nice to talk to someone who’s still passionate about life. I feel like I don’t encounter that very much anymore.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you know how it is here. People get stuck in their routines so easily. I wasn’t immune to that either. I think that after we—after you left, I really wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t have immediate plans to go to school, so I just kept working, thinking, oh just next semester, just one more year, and then five years had gone by. I mean, don’t get me wrong—I had a ton of fun here. Plenty of people stayed behind, some for school, some with jobs, and some like me. We went out a lot. We had parties. I met people, went swimming, went hiking, camping, escaping clutches of this place by venturing outward. It never really worked—the escape that is—morning always arrived and we’d pile into our trucks and cars and come back home and start again. Then, slowly more and more people started to move away. I picked up hobbies—painting, writing, knitting, oh god, I even tried to learn guitar at one point!”
“Were you any good?”
“At which?”
“All of them. I always though you had such a nice creative way of expressing yourself. Like, you remember those little drawings you used to drop into my locker?”
She sits up straight and whips her head around to meet my gaze, centrifugal forces throwing her hair outward and around.
(Part I)
“So what have you been up to for the last ten years?” she says, “I know, I know, that’s a lot to summarize. Give me the highlights.”
“Oh god…um…well, went to school—it was fine—graduated, got a job shortly after, loved it, hated it, am okay with it now. I moved several times, narrowed down my list of close friends to five people, went through multiple obsessions, day in, day out. I try to not feel restless all the time but I’m not good at doing things on a whim. I’ve travelled here and there, but never that far. I started smoking. Actually—do you mind?”
She shakes her head no so I pull out a pack of cigarettes from my pocket.
“Actually, can I have one I hate to be that—”
“Say no more.”
I grab two and hand her one. She puts it in her mouth and I light it, her hand shrouding the wind from the flame, our fingers grazing. I light mine. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.
“I mean, man, that’s all the boring stuff that I’ve done. Shit you talk about with co-workers. I always have a hard time coming up with anything interesting to say despite having done interesting things.”
“Oh yeah?” Exhale. “Like what?”
“Um…let’s see. You know, the problem is that it all seems so mundane, they’re all ‘ you had to be there’ kind of moments.”
“Try me.”
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Hold. Exhale.
The sun is setting over the horizon of trees across the river. The water is cold on my feet, dangled off this dock as I sway them back and forth. Orange and red and a faint purple. The breeze is nice. No mosquitoes anymore—late enough in the season. Long sleeve weather.
This place—this place had been so damn magical that night—the two of us hand in hand, eating candy and naming all the shapes in the dark sky.
Fish jumping. Splashes in the night.
Gone.
Ephemeral.
“How long have you been here?”
A turn of my head. A smile.
“Uhh…I don’t know…what time is it?”
“8:30.”
“About an hour then.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“No. It’s okay. It’s been nice. I was early.”
