The candle light flickered and bounced around on the bathroom tiled walls like little streaks of electricity with no conductor. I slowly submerged my shoulders a little deeper in the steaming hot bath and as my lobes met the water I tilted my head back till it touched the edge of the tube and slowly closed my eyes watching the flickers dim through my lashes. I gently inhaled a deep quite breath and my chest rose closer to the surface arching my back and I held myself there for a few seconds. I felt the cool air on my chest then carefully, as controlled as I could, let the air out feeling my back lower to the bottom of the tub. I repeated this, the lifting and sinking, the inhale and the exhale.

I found myself barefooted in lush freshly cut green grass over looking a small twisting river over looked by some evergreen picket mountains. Squinting past the warm sun, I saw a white cotton cloud just beginning to crest the peak of a distant mountain, slowly, gently splitting the cloud into two. I stepped forward feeling the blades of grass give resistance before they bent under the weight of my body and continued through the grass to the edge of the river and stepped in the brisk amber water. It was moving just fast enough that you had to crouch and lean into the current to not lose your footing. As I got to waist deep I saw vegetal water brought twigs, greens and capsized beetles or two drifting on down the steam. I submerged. I came back up, hair pasted to my brow and whipped my face then leaned back against the current to let the current flow over the back of my shoulders to the front of my chest and closed my eyes. The sun was just above, mid day, warm and I can see the round orange disk on the back of my eyelids. I leaned a little deeper to catch each blip, plop and splash of the billowing flow and the orange disk cooled from above. I squinted my eyes to lash to find a silver lined cotton cloud destructing the sun’s rays.

Sincerely,
Jay