Searching for Soul

I trudged through constellations and scoured the ocean’s floor searching for her.

We had somehow become separated on the train.  She went to gaze out at the world, with chin propped on fist and forehead pressed against the window, while I headed for the dining car.

I didn’t see the tears, didn’t know how she longed to stop the train, bound down the steps two at a time, and meander through fields and mountains beyond, stopping to talk to flowers, walk barefoot through streams, and dance to music she always insisted was playing.  I think she might have told me, but I couldn’t hear over the din of passengers, and the whirring by of time.

But after a while I came to miss her, and so shouldered my backpack and took off in search.
I peered under rocks and up into trees, and every day checked the sky to see if she had left a message written upon the clouds.

But my neck grew sore from craning, so I stopped looking, and started meandering, and then I stopped doing anything at all.

One day as I sat above the water, wondering if I would ever see her again, I came upon the tiny room between thoughts that lives in the house of Silence.  I knocked on the door and the next thing I knew I was a pattern of light dancing on the waves. 

(I would tell you what this is like, but when you are a pattern of light in the room between thoughts that lives in the house of Silence, it is…


…and that is all.)

But just before a seagull discovered my disguise and swooped down to swallow me whole, she came and stood beside me.

She was quiet for a time, and then said,

“That was good, but water is easy.  Now let’s see you try something more difficult, let’s see you become who you truly are.”