^new^ — Oobe

I floated six inches above my own chest. From that height, my body was a beached thing, pajamas twisted, mouth open on a wet snore. My mother sat in the rocker, knitting something gray. I waved my new, translucent hand. She didn’t look up. Of course she didn’t. I was made of nothing but window glass and held breath.

Then the tether snapped.

He never came back down.

At fifty miles up, I met the others.

Don’t look back .

Now I’m an adult with a mortgage and a pill for my thyroid. I stand in grocery lines. I return library books. I attend meetings where we discuss “synergy.” And every few months, without warning, I’ll be washing dishes or sitting at a red light, and the floor will go soft. My hands will look like someone else’s hands. And I’ll remember:

The Earth was a dime. My house was less than dust. My feverish body, that little animal pinned to a mattress, was already being forgotten by the universe. And that was the real terror. Not death. Scale . The absolute, hilarious indifference of altitude. I floated six inches above my own chest

I looked back.