Empty Bathtub

She sat in the empty bathtub, and pointed her paintbrush towards an imaginary horizon. An illusory edge to the world, which to those who knew how to look was infinite.

Looking past the tiled bathroom walls, and through the hundreds and thousands, the millions of walls between her and endlessness, she saw freedom. She could taste it in the salty air, could feel it in the warm breeze racing over her skin, and she smiled, laughed, hair whipping in time to the swell of the waves.

Leaning back, falling into the bathtub, she looked up at the bright blue sky. It enveloped the world, like a blanket, soothing and warm. Its vastness gave her comfort, reassurance that the world was more. More than an empty bathtub in a cold city.

Infinity. It spread from her fingertips. She reached out and touched Jupiter’s rings with gentle hands. She raced a comet across the universe, and danced, danced with a lonely Kraken, friendless in the depths of the ocean’s darkest canyons.

She made two healing cups of tea and listened to Death’s stories, stories filled with wonder, stories that hadn’t been heard in over a thousand years. She promised to listen to them again, soon, and brushed away a dusty tear from Death’s cheek.

She closed her eyes and rode atop a Bald Eagle, the wind tearing involuntary tears from her eyes, and she laughed, laughed in time to the eagle’s cry, as they hurtled towards their prey.

A door. She opened her eyes, a cracked ceiling where a blue sky used to be. They were home. And with them, loneliness.

image by me @andy_illustrates