I stare at the curved ceiling of the bus. I’m in my own head again. But the street lamps and the lights of a cities buildings recreate the dappled effect of water.
I’m underwater.
I’m a kid at the aquarium again.
I’m alone, but I am not lonely.
I am not hungry, but I starve, though I do not know what for.
A car drives by, it’s headlights making shapes in my waterworld.
Light through the windows, the skeleton of a deep sea creature only I can see.
It swims above me, fleshed out by my gaze alone, and I can hear it’s call in my gut, deep in my soul in a way only I know.
I am eaten alive by it, though not literally. I can feel it down my chest, in my stomach, my limbs. I have always carried it with me.
I am lonely, but not alone.
I hunger for a life I will never experience, and starve for a life I never had.
I am alone under the water, the dappled light dripping through to me. The creatures are gone now.
I’m in my own head.
I’m on a bus, and I’m almost to my house.
Is this home?
Is home inside of myself, is home that dappled waterscape, is home the song of that creature?
Or is home a house, somewhere I must leave, somewhere I cannot escape to the sea, stuck in fields of hay?
Where am I?