The need for air scalded his respiratory system like strong coffee and his heart ached, but he could not stop. They would never stop; he could never stop.
Only one hope remained in his sweat-soaked mind: the water tower. From the top of the water tower, he could shoot off a signal. From the top of the water tower, a rescue party could find him. From the top of the water tower, he could steer the future.
He looked up from the bottom, took another scorching breath, and began to climb, and they followed close behind.
***Where is the future? From whom does he run?***
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He had been running for what seemed like hours, and still they pursued him, sometimes sniffing right at his heels, other times falling back, giving him the advantage, then disappearing altogether before popping out of knotholes or sewer grates a few steps behind.
The need for air scalded his respiratory system like strong coffee and his heart ached, but he could not stop. They would never stop; he could never stop.
Only one hope remained in his sweat-soaked mind: the water tower. From the top of the water tower, he could shoot off a signal. From the top of the water tower, a rescue party could find him. From the top of the water tower, he could steer the future.
He looked up from the bottom, took another scorching breath, and began to climb, and they followed close behind.
She always knew that if she tried she could find the ladder to the sky.
It was her dream to find that ladder and climb away from her life and into the sky.
No-she didn't want to die and go to heaven. She simply wanted to go live in the sky.
The sky a color blue that reminded her of a favorite shirt, turquoise. It reminded her of happier times, beautiful stones from the desert and something that was cool, welcoming, strong.
The sky which called to her with a low, sweet song. A siren song that reached her day and night, asleep and awake, happy and sad. That song lured her heart like iron to a magnet. There was no way to resist.
Finally she just gave up and thought there would be no ladder. Her days followed a monotonous hum that left her in a somnambulistic trance. Work, eat, walk, sleep, lather, rinse, repeat.
Then one day she chose to walk home a different way. One street left, one street right, fork in the road.
There it stood.
She was on her way home.
The Way
Is likely something simple – a bridge over blue space, a kind of catwalk silvered with memories like the time she stood on top of the jungle gym and shouted without stopping for seven and a half minutes until Ms. Penning came and called her name softly. Her own children in the bed, impossibly close, and her voice reading aloud to them. It’s probably the kind of walkway where the end cannot be glimpsed ahead of time. There may be spaces between the boards, darker places where other memories wait. She never saw her mother wear that string of small pearls until she was in her coffin. White on white. Something about the passage will remind her of white and of every smile she has ever seen. Near the end she will release the rail. It is not a way that can be lost.
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