horizon

Exploring a cavernous mall with old school friends, we search for something once familiar but now painfully absent. We smile empty smiles and laugh hollow laughs; we barely know each other. I discover a gaping rectangular hole in the tile floor, jutting out of which is the top half of a paddle wheel, rotating drowsily, shining with water. The others hesitate, but I sit on a blade, which emits a sleepy tone and lowers me down until the black floor disappears overhead, and there is a long moment when all is dark and full of possibility, and fear squeezes my heart as I wonder if I've made a mistake. But my eyes adjust and I see a placid ocean stretching out before me and the sky like a tunnel growing in brightness and terminating in an amber sun. The wheel dips me into this warmth. It slides up my toes, my legs, waist, torso, arms, neck and ears. The balmy waves slide through my body, and my seat turns away into oily depths. I float limp in a gentle current that pulls me toward the glowing sun, always just a few yards ahead. The primordial waters fill me with a vigor unfelt in ages. I long to explore, to swim farther, untethered from parents, friends, past. I swim, and the sun retreats, pulling me into my new horizon.