After The Struggle

The sky isn't always blue like how preschoolers always paint it. At least it isn't in here - I opened my eyes and breathed steadily. The water covered my ears vertically as I was floating on the purplish lake reflecting the night sky. All the sounds were muffled. The owls. The ripples. My irregular heartbeat. With my face looking out upon the glowing ceiling of heaven, there were dragonflies penetrating through the woods here and there. They have come here to die. To be exact, they came here to lay eggs, but a few weeks after that, they would come back to the same place and die.

Standing back up with my feet on the bottom of the lake, the water leveled with my collarbones. A bike was sitting on the bank, leaning against an oak. I didn't remember getting off this bike I'd been riding. I couldn't remember stopping. I can't. Stop.

I didn't come here to die. I came here to put words up as architecture so I could ride over it.

What if the dragonflies were humans? I think about this all the time. They would have their children start going to school meeting other dragonflies and learn about smoking cigarettes and lean on the fence I built with my bare hands to blow rings out for girls to poke at. If the dragonflies were humans, they wouldn't come here to die.

When I was small, I used to cry so hard that I laughed. Now that I'm older, I often laugh so hard that I start crying. There must be some kind of reasons for that, but it doesn't really matter anymore. I'm not going to figure out why and I'm just going to let unfinished business and unsolved mysteries be unfinished and unsolved. And I'm scared. I'm not going to lie anymore. I am scared. You can't forever pretend that nothing scares you. I'm scared because this world is too intricate. I'm scared because I'm the girl that would ask you which way left was when we slow danced.

I walked towards the bank and grabbed the towel laying beside the bike. The withered leaves on the ground reminded me that late Autumn was ending soon. I dried my hair and the rest of my body, then covered myself with the towel like a new-born baby. I pressed on the bruise on my knee to check if it still hurt. These violet clouds had been so stubborn that they wouldn't fade away from my kneecap. I was taught that we had to accept falls as a part of every process because each one would hit harder than the last. Fall a few times on a bike and you'll learn how to keep your balance. Fall a few times and you'll learn. Fall a few times, no matter from what or for who.

Places like this is just another draft in my head, but it's all that I have now. Late Autumn is ending soon. This, too, is ending soon. When we know something that's beyond our control is ending, we should enjoy it till the end.

After the struggle, after every struggle, I keep on riding as the season changes, as the lakes I see are not the same as the one I swam in. And as everything changes, I tell myself that I'm changing too, when in fact it's always been the same. After this struggle, after every struggle we've never really changed. The swallows are flying back from the South. It's always the same.

The sky seemed a bit purplish tonight. I opened my eyes and breathed steadily.