Prisoner of Crystals

When’s the last time you watched the remainder of your oxygen bubbles dance outwards, struggling before joining the dead space. The waters brushed against its icy barrier.

We will never be the same.” I told him. “Feel the same. Express it the same. Just face it: your lack of depth is depriving you of something that you may never understand. Even with eyes, you see the truth behind nothing. Your panic is a self-induced waterboard. Don’t be your own prisoner.”

“What did you do next?” he inquired, throwing off my rambling. “How’d you get out?”

I hesitated.

“What’s the first thing you shouldn’t do while drowning?” I broke the silence with a daring glare.

“Panic?” He looked at me, this time, more reassured. I nodded. “Was that the first thing you did?”

I shook my head. “The first thing I did was breach. Come to find the waters iced top. Twisting and rolling, suspended in deathly chilled liquid. You don’t really understand what’s going on while it’s going on. And the time man- the time went so slow. An hour felt like a day, as a minute felt like an hour. Like it was never going to end.”

“Then what?”

Surprised at the reaching curiosity, I retracted an agitated face as I realized this was what I have come here for. To solve my own problems.

“A song played. A damn song broke into my direct attention and brought with it a warming sensation. A place to go other than here. It brought me back man. I mean way back too. To where it stated the first time.

I saw the clouds rip in my direct vision. A child wiggling, adapting to his surrounds, craving to understand what’s before him with no intention to realize there’s another side to this forward place. Behind. And with that I caught this ride on the chronologically correct meta events train. It broke me into alignment with the realization of mixed senses. In this place, this fantasy, this- lucid experience. I fought with flavors as colors. Called to my attention the synchronicity of things. The relation of matter I have not been able to translate in human tongue. Shapes mold the apparent, frequencies carried everything. Some you are not allowed to hear. There are things you won’t be able to see. Women have the ability to know what only they can understand. And we call ourselves, the males, dominant?.

Nevertheless there was always somebody there. As I experienced it. When I slacked within the reel, I came to an understanding of what it meant to have a guardian.

It wasn’t my grandmother; I spoke comprehended tongue in silence as I wafted the wake service, again. We spoke for the last time, for the first time.

It wasn’t the person whom society influenced your blind faith in. Nor is it an object of illustration, possession, conquest, or real in this dimension. It’s as delusional as it came be said. It was me.”

His jaw dropped as if his face lost its ability to tense.

“But your- you’re here? How could-“

“Don’t interrupt me, I’ll tell you exactly why in time. Just sit and listen to the lesson. You speak too much to hear. You have to remember something: thinking and its outwards silence doesn’t attribute to listening. To get the lesson in anything, you must dismiss yourself from all distractions. From yourself, those tendencies to jump the gun.” I fixed myself, returning to a prominent posture, looking beyond as he looked about.

“You get to a point where you understand that this, whatever it is, is as obvious as it really seems to be. No gimmicks, makeup, outlining or other explanations. Exactly as you seen, heard, taste, smelled but never-“ I charged these next few words to signal their importance. “never as they seemed! The biggest con, the biggest truth, will always be you and what makes up your capabilities. This life is about endurance kid. Nothing else. If you can ride it out longer than the next man, you have just become the man. But- you will eventually become the next man.”

Smoke escaped my mouth. A quarter worth of a finger rolled cigarette clutched onyx ash that built on its tip.

“You get that?”

“I got it.”

“It’s not all about storing it. It’s how you use it too.”

“In regard to?”

“Potential. So-“ I sucked the remainder as if my lungs adored suffocation. “at the end, it always ends. The leaves fall off the tree to bloom once again.

I rode the internal sound waves. Crashing, infiltrating my pressure blown ear canals. Coldness crept in places that would make you tear at yourself in hopes of drawing it out. Muscles cramped quickly, it’s already bad you know. The realization that this is your last realization.

As a traveler I neglected the fault of fraction. How these little impurities taint even the cleanest of waters.” I let out a soft giggle, something to assure the absurdity of this situation.

I returned his dumbfounded gaze with a spike of horror concealed by malevolence and confusion. “You asked how I escaped, right?”

A stern nod broke through his ongoing evaluation. One that made him grow a twitch. His knee sung rapping against the wooden planks. He sat restlessly.

“Who said I got out?”

Immediately he shot up, springing himself backwards only to meet an invisible boundary concealing this forest ridden front porch. We sat conversing in a special part of the deep woods where imagination formed a perfect ecosystem along with a cabin ridden in its midst. The sun shown through morning fog. The animals from within the foliage trekked slowly to sniff around his shrinking encapsulation. Watching the explosive tendencies of man and his clutch onto the physical live. Simply, deathly panic. I tossed the cigarette and watched it disappear on command. As he left one world for another, he continued to flail and reach questionable outward bursts of profanity. Some whaling of regret and “prayer” for sanctuary. I watched as he fell right through those boundaries as their walls dissipated.

They all do this; this show of fear for the inevitable. As I did when Ada removed me from powerlessness right before I disbanded from my lifeforce. Crossing over myself, to myself, within my deepest fear: drowning.

Gagging followed limb scrambling, chest clutching, throat tearing grasps of air.

I just watched, waited. While prone, his torso lifting off the ground with every inhale, I sat by him.

“Did I just-“

He began as I crunched forest debris join him on the illusion of this forest floor. He tried running out of the boundaries of this space without luck.

“Yes.”

“So, I’m?!-“ he said exhausted.

“Mhm.” I replied calm.

“That was horrid!”

“Better than a long thaw in a frozen pond kid. Now, get up. Don’t worry about remembering to breathe, it doesn’t work here anyways.”

Fin.

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Thank you, love always,

-Jahvon "Jex" John