Rise and Fall

The moon came out from behind the mountains, rising above the earth like a glowing pumpkin. Big and plump, it rose up and cast the ground with an unsettling light. I lay back in the grass, the crickets chirping all around me.

What was this night supposed to be like?

I couldn’t help but feeling like the man on the moon was watching me, keeping one monstrous, cheesy eye on me and the other on the sun’s orbit. I wondered what life in outer space would be like, how freeing it must be to float within the abyss.

I felt my skin, lifting off the warmth of the grass. I drifted upward into the sky; and I knicked my elbow on the edge of the moon. The man looked up at me and laughed quietly to himself asking me if I were alright. I shut my eyes tightly fearing how far above the ground I was. When I gained the courage to open my eyes, all fear dissipated.

I was there, just being. That is all I was. Just a being floating above the great blue; marveling at how small my mother and father were. I wasn’t afraid of the fall back towards Earth, it would take a long time before I began my plummet, and I’d be dead before I hit anyways.

The stars shone around me like millions of candles lit under a vast black blanket. I saw nebula, drifted in between star clusters and stretched through wormholes. I saw time and space in four dimensions, my mind converting itself into another eye. An eye manifested above myself, seeing all around me. I could see all angles and all things. I remembered my mother back on earth, and the illustrious eye on the back of her head. She’d have been jealous of my mind’s eye.

I traveled far and wide within the universe, wearing nothing but the skins I was born into. I saw magnificent births, stunning deaths and all of the in between. After I experienced the goodness of the universe, I knew it was time. I turned myself back to the earthen sands that bore my flesh and fell headfirst. I fell for hours. I fell for days, months, and years. I fell until the word broke into pieces and no longer meant anything. Then in the last moments of my fall, when I began to spark and glow brighter then a thousand dying stars, I began to cry.

I cried for all the glory that was life. I cried for all the people who endured hatred. I cried for animals suffering. I cried for people suffering. I cried for suffering itself, for it knew nothing else. I knew of beauty, of life, of love, of peace. I could only hope that with the last of my burning embers, my knowledge would be passed from myself to my brethren on Earth.

With one last gasp, I whistled. Just then, the water immersed my hot body, turning my flesh made of sands into glass. Once again I was floating, not upwards, but downwards into the blackness of the ocean.