Over the edge her feet dangled outward. She swung them lightly and the wind pushed against her bare legs. The horizontal bar broke her vision and the view split into different spaces. Above, the sky dizzily floated by and the multi-colored clouds, the red and blue and deep green, formed a topographic pattern. The lines blurred together creating soft mountains that dangled between the blue sky and vast spread of land.
She popped her head up over the bar to see the strip she was missing. She looked below. Underneath her, the bridge, thick water flowed brilliant and coursing. Each drop of color a different hue all coming together to create a roaring beauty directly underneath her nose. As each ripple bounded toward her, diving into each other and bubbling into translucent domes on the surface, each slightly different. The water’s thick gloss was so bright she had to look next to it, not at it, seeing the colors in her peripheral vision.
The colors of the river were moving so fast the thick clumps resembled water. It stuck to the rocks buried into the bottom, stuck like candy to the surfaces, giving a gloss to them, a paste, film.
The world seemed a crevice she had fallen into. It was a beautiful green pasture turned on its side. She was sandwiched between the flowers and the sky, and the water simply followed. The path was easy. She floated. In every breath the world transformed closer to an idyllic state. The free forms of colors seemed to change into anything. She closed her eyes hard trying to change things around her but nothing moved. She moved the lollipop around in her mouth before taking it out. The sugar stuck to her gums. It latched onto her and clung to the pink ridges. As she rolled it around in her hand, the colors slowly rolled off everything. They stripped away like flaking paint, the water losing its softness and smoothness. The colors began to float up toward the clouds. The flowing water shifted back to its normal blue and the froth on the top foamed back. The whiteness began drowning out the darkness of the blue. The bubbles became bubbles.
She popped the lollipop back in her mouth and the colors began to reanimate and liven the world around her. She closed her eyes hard again to see the colors through a filter. The peach color of the back of her eyelids blurred the colors together and they became their own guiding map. She used the guide to create her own Earth. She blew air out of the side of her mouth to simulate wind. She smiled at the new place.
Her feet still dangled slowly. The mixed sun began to set. She leaned back. She swung her legs until, like a changing film reel, the sun became the moon, and her lollipop crunched.
She walked home through the blackness. Everything blurred in the dark. The dirt and streets looked two, like the world had tilted and recreated itself but the first world stayed existing too. She ate the last bits of her lollipop that were stuck to the stem as she walked.
Toy Skeleton 