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Strawberry Skies
The world is flipped sideways and there’s an ocean on top of our heads being filtered down through some gigantic meteorological spray bottle that only reaches the Seattle metropolitan area. The anvil-shaped cumulonimbus monstrosities are gray, even though summer and Seattle are pink words and why couldn’t it rain the strawberry shade of the cotton candy my friend and I shared that crowded downtown day when the sky-ocean was empty and there wasn’t a cloud in sight?
Maybe my eyes, the same color as the murky lake I swim in during summers, are obscuring my worldview. Maybe one day, I’ll push off from the silt-covered lake bottom and begin to see everything as I should. There’s always been some surface tension muffling me out, my voice muted by the watery depths, and whether I be five feet or three inches deep, I feel a disconnect from the people who splash lightheartedly at the surface. Occasionally, I join other amphibious people, and we unite for a moment before the wake those motorboats churn up separate us.
Maybe I’m here by choice. Maybe surface-people are too overwhelming, too act-now, think-later for my more contemplative approach to life. Maybe I’ll build up some thicker skin, and they’ll grow gills, and we’ll understand each other. But until then, I feel like my mind’s eye works better underwater. I can see the people milling around the huge guitar-shaped building, hear my friend’s words clearer, even taste the strawberry saccharine sweetness of cotton candy much clearer than I could on land.
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