Journey With No Witness

I dropped alone
and waited for the universe
to notice.

At first,
nothing.

Just the clock ticking,
the refrigerator humming,
and that little thought—

Did I take enough?

Then the carpet moved.

Not much.

Just enough
to let me know
it had been pretending
to be still
my entire life.

The walls inhaled.

The curtains exhaled.

Colors began leaking
out of ordinary things
like reality had been painted
with too much water.

And then—

everything became
interesting.

My hands.

My hands!

Five impossible creatures
growing from my palms,
moving because I asked them to.

I stared at them
for what might have been
three minutes

or three thousand years.

Time had become useless.

The clock said 10:17.

I looked away.

I looked back.

10:17.

I laughed.

Of course.

Time was in on it too.

Then the music changed.

Not the song—

me.

Every note had shape.

Every bass line had color.

I could almost reach into the air
and pull the sound apart
with my fingers.

Purple.

Orange.

Electric blue.

Patterns crawled across the ceiling,
ancient and impossible,
folding into themselves,

again,

and again,

and again—

wait.

Had I already thought this?

Had I already thought
that I had already thought this?

I laughed again.

Then I realized
I was laughing at myself
laughing at myself

and suddenly
I understood infinity.

At least
I thought I did.

I walked to the mirror.

Bad idea.

Good idea.

Impossible to tell.

My face became
every age I had ever been.

Child.

Adult.

Old woman.

Stranger.

Animal.

Ancestor.

Then simply—

eyes.

Two enormous windows
looking back at the thing
that had spent a lifetime
pretending to be me.

And I asked,

Who are you?

The reflection smiled.

And somewhere inside my head
came the answer:

Exactly.

Then the walls disappeared.

Not literally.

But suddenly
I could feel everything beyond them.

The sleeping houses.

The trees.

The insects humming beneath the grass.

Millions of people
dreaming inside millions of rooms.

And for one impossible moment

there was no me

and no them.

Just one enormous thing
playing hide-and-seek
with itself.

Pretending to be separate.

Pretending to be lonely.

Pretending to forget.

I cried
because it was beautiful.

Then laughed
because I was crying.

Then cried
because I was laughing.

And the universe
seemed perfectly fine
with all of it.

Hours later,

the patterns softened.

The walls stopped breathing.

My hands became hands again.

The clock finally moved.

Morning slipped through the blinds
like nothing had happened.

But I knew better.

Because somewhere
beneath the ordinary world—

beneath the carpet,
beneath the walls,
beneath my name—

the colors were still moving.

The universe was still breathing.

And reality
was still quietly smiling,

waiting for me
to notice again.

~HappyKB