In Continuum.

Bubbles

I couldn't take the view of my room, the colors were stabbing at my eyes, like the way the image on the television screen does when the color contrast isn't right, and the brightness is too sharp for comfort. Despite the blistering heat outside of my air-conditioned room then, I stepped out and into the balcony to breathe in some fresh air. Breathe, I told myself to do. Breathe. I can't even do that naturally now, and I need to be prompted. What's wrong with me?

So the wind was stale in the late afternoon air, and the splashing of the swimming pool water by the children welled up from nineteen floors below. Children screaming while being chased by other children, and the cars busying away on the roads, minding their businesses as usual. Nothing was different about the view, nothing at all. And like staying in my room, even the open air of the balcony offered no comfort to my suffocating heart and mind.

Just then, something rose from below, round obs floating in midair like little crystal balls. They were followed by other crystals, floating up into the air in currents from below. Someone was playing with bubbles downstairs, blowing them into the stale air of the afternoon and drifting upwards to me, so conincidentally, as I was finding the view to be suffocating.

They rose up into the air, and I watched until the last of the bubbles burst, before I looked down at the next wave of them. They were beautiful, colors reflecting off their surfaces and changing shapes as they went. I grabbed at a few, and they exploded in my hand into a tiny drop of soap water. It felt soapy in my hand, smooth against the tips of my fingers, and that careful observation of the sensation was interrupted by another bubble bursting in my face.

I stared at them for a long time, until the transparent insides of the bubble was filled with the little piece of sky behind and was hidden from my naked eyes. I don't remember the last time I played with bubbles, and figured it was probably sometime in my childhood days, troubled by which toy to grab off the shelves rather than anything else in life. THAT was my life, anything that revolved around playthings. And looking at the bubbles as they slowly drifted up into the hazy afternoon sky, I missed those days, and hoped like a child for the bubbles to bear my troubles up up and away...

But they always explode, don't they? And down they crash back to earth all the time, every time...