woolgathering
/ˈwo͝olˌɡaT͟H(ə)riNG/
indulging in aimless thought, daydreaming
imagine; you're on a swing at a children's park. you're seven years old. it's August. you swing higher and higher, and higher and then you jump. you jump and your feet never touch the ground. you're at the top of a staircase made of light. you blink and the staircase goes up, so you climb. you can't really tell if it's a spiral staircase or not. the railing is fluid but supports your weight. if you look down, there's the park hundreds of feet below. you think about your science project. there's a lace curtain at the top of the staircase. you push it to the side and find yourself on a new staircase, this time covered in snow. your legs are tired, and the snow is melting, and you slip. you're falling up the staircase. at the bottom (top?) you find spring. spring with grass and flowers and chocolate eggs. you think about the easter bunny, and he appears, and he tells you a secret. then it's summer, and the staircase never felt so long after all. but instead of going back down, the only direction - both ways - is up. you're eight, and then you're eighteen and you're tired of the easter bunny, and the lace curtain, and the bruises you get when you fall up the snowy stairs. when you turn around the stairs only go up, they only ever go up. so you sit, in summer, and you don't find fall, but you're still twenty, and thirty, and fifty-five. something touches your shoulder and you turn. nothing except the staircase have you been able to make contact with. it's your mother, and you're on a swing at a children's park. she tells you you've been daydreaming, and it's time to go home before it gets dark, and that you have a science project to work on. you're seven and it's August and you've been staring into space on a swing at the park, but how does that explain all the things you now know?
YOU ARE READING
short stories by snowman
Cerita Pendekit feels so familiar, like someone you loved and whose face you have forgotten. somewhere in your body, somewhere that doesn't exist starts to ache. it aches for the singing of the stars. you just want to go home, don't you? if only you knew where t...
