When the dying light’s been chased beyond the horizon and only the darkest blues dance in the sky, I lie down and close my eyes. Then, and only then, do I truly face myself.
I’m sure you think I mean in the emotional sense of the phrase, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but that’s not quite it. There’s no time to explain; it’s already started. As the clamor of the world fades into singular silence, I stand at the cusp of reality and look down into the nothingness below. My being is vibrating. I’m exhilarated, I’m terrified, I want to hang on just a little longer, I want to let myself be carried away. I push and I pull and this time push wins.
I’m in the infinite nothingness. I’m neither falling nor rising, because gravity is a thing of reality and this is not that. Here I’m not real and you’re not real, and all the billions of real things aren’t real. I want nothing because wants are real and I need nothing because needs are real too. I feel I’ve been here for a millisecond and I feel I’ve been here since the beginning of everything, because that time we hold dear? It’s not real either.
I am the infinite nothingness.
But this doesn’t last because soon I feel that pull, that nagging pulse in this empty nothingness that tells me I must become something. As you know, every action has a reaction and it seems even this void can’t disobey that one essential law. I’m exhilarated, I’m terrified, I want to hang on just a little longer, I want to let myself be carried away. I push and I pull and this time pull wins.
Light pierces the darkness as I become some sort of real again. Form erupts out of the nothing, a fountain of being spilling forth the ground beneath, sky above, and a whole lot of real things in between. I’m spun into reality thread by thread, bone to flesh to skin, and I feel cool damp grass underfoot. The air is warm and smells of morning dew.
I turn all around me. Every night, I land on a new shore in the sea of memory. This one’s a distant land once obscured by heavy mist. I know my way.
Before long I spot the child playing by a brook. They’re squatting in the adorably balled-up way that children squat, tiny arms resting on knees, one of which has a band-aid on it. I remember when they slipped and scraped their knee balancing on a wet rock. They slowly move a twig through the water, like a painter with an experienced hand. I get closer, but go unnoticed. No one ever notices me.
The child yelps with excitement and kneels down, face almost smashing into the water. I kneel down next to them and look down into the brook to see what’s so exciting. There are one, two, three, four, no, five tadpoles curiously approaching the twig, which the child is now holding very still to avoid spooking the curious creatures. I turn to watch the child’s face, the absolute glee spreading across it. The child giggles and sings:
Five little tadpoles swimming near the shore.
The first one said, “Let’s swim some more.”
The second one said, “Let’s rest awhile.”
The third one said, “Swimming makes me smile.”
The fourth one said, “My legs are growing long.”
The fifth one said, “I’m getting very strong.”
Five little tadpoles will soon be frogs.
They’ll jump from the water and sit on logs.
I inhale sharply. Hot tears well in my eyes and spill down into the brook. I’m not sure what just washed over me, this feeling that’s blooming at the core of my being. The song. I know that song. It just awoke something within me, something that I’d put away for a very, very long time. I was scared it would spoil if I let it be, so I buried it deep. But now that feeling rises layer by layer and warms me from inside. The joy of a child.
I look at the tadpoles again, tears rolling down my cheeks. They’ve lost interest in the twig and are swimming on. The child waves and yells after them: “Bye little polies! Come back when you’re big froggies and we can hop, hop, hop all day!” The child grows silent and watches them swim away a while longer. And then they turn to me.
I freeze in the steel grip of their eyes, my tear ducts suddenly snapping shut. I have the urge to look behind me, but I know there’s nothing there. The child’s looking at me and only me. This has never happened before. I’m some sort of real for sure, but never real enough to be seen. But the child does. I feel exposed. Their eyes stay on mine the way children’s eyes linger on strangers, with cautious curiosity. And then slowly the child’s hand extends towards me.
My breath catches in my throat. I thought I knew how this works, but I feel that we’ve breached the event horizon. There are no rules and I’ve got no idea what happens next. I fear the worst. I fear that this breach will destroy me and I’ll be flung into the infinite cosmos between realities. I close my eyes and await my doom.
A touch.
Soft. Small. So small I almost don’t feel it. But it’s there. I can tell by the warmth, the way it’s radiating into my arm and I wonder how something so little could make me feel so much. I open my eyes and the child sports a wide smile. One front tooth is missing. The warmth unfreezes me and the tears melt out of my eyes, heavy drops I can’t control. We stay like that for a while.
A voice. It’s calling from somewhere beyond my field of vision. The child turns towards the voice and yells, “I’m coming, mama!” before bounding up and disappearing into the shrubbery.
Just like that I’m alone. But I don’t feel alone, not anymore. The child is me and I remember now that I am still that child.
The pull. It’s time to go. My threads are coming undone, skin to flesh to bone. The sky folds in on itself like a paper map and the ground crumbles into nothing beneath me. I don’t resist and pull wins regardless.
My eyes shoot open and I lurch, my face wet with tears. I’m back in reality, the one you and I know so well. In the silence I hear the walls breathing and shifting ever so slightly. The light’s returned to chase the dark blues in the sky away for a little while, filtering in through the slits of my curtains. My journey’s already escaping to the edge of my memory, but the feeling, yes, that feeling remains.
I put a hand on my arm, the spot where I still feel the touch. It’s warm.