Vertigo

In. Out. In. The world spirals away from those who cling to the clouds, from those whose dreams are too loud for the earth, that they must be heard from the high heavens. Those who dangle at such a precarious height occasionally experience boughts of vertigo. When this happens, these such creatures of height must resort to the method of counting, to slow a heart rate, to regain their balance.

In. Out. In.

He stares down and smiles at the ants beneath his lite-up sneakers—he may be four, but he's going on thirty. His love for power, for control, is already showing; he'll be a narcissist within a few years. But every once in awhile, he'll catch his four year-old self hovering above the trapped man of thirty, and his stomach drops and his heart skips a beat. He almost walks away from the ants, but his thirty year-old self overcomes him, as it always does.

His foot, acting of its accord, jumps out and squashes the ants. The four-year-old is almost scared by that sound, that little breath that the ants almost released as the life rushed out of them.

In. Out. In.

The Eiffel tower glowers at the ground, dreaming of the day when lightning no longer strikes her with cruel injustices, of the day when she isn't so lonely. So she breathes, because that's the only thing to do; because she's just a lonely soul, pleading to fall in love with the ground—the heavens seem far too empty for any living soul, including her.

In. Out. In.

The moon sheds tears every night in the form of moon beams. She cries for the stars flying towards Earth, their life blazing behind them. She cries for never being able to join them, her children who she cannot meet, for she is forever stuck in orbit around an Earth that couldn't care, around a god she doesn't worship. She will never be able to join them; will only relish and fear this weightlessness, this in-between state of death. So she breathes.

In. Out. In.

As souls intertwine, wrapped in space, they climb higher into space, precariously dangling, it strikes us as funny, how oh-so high we are, how oh-so alone we are.

(Human beings aren't creatures of height, after all.)