Tiny Fish

But she just couldn’t hold onto them. Elusive and darting as tiny fish in a warm pond, they slipped away and became suddenly no more than glints of silver in the corner of her eye. And the pond would cool, and the clouds would roll in, and her body became heavy once more. The stifling shroud settled around her like the winding sheet that it was, and she withdrew inside the shelter that was no haven.

She realized there was a flow to her life. Sometimes it stopped and eddied and played, but the water kept running, running downhill, to some great ocean of oblivion. Sometimes she even looked forward to joining that great body of water. At least it would be constant, even, and part of a rolling oneness that she grasped at but couldn’t reach as she trickled and ran across rocks in her narrow lonely stream bed.

These were her moments. Stepping stone to stepping stone.