Like Air.

In the swiftly receding heat and shy autumn, the warm tarmac of the rooftop of the boys’ dormitories was a pleasant retreat.

For a while, Kirk observed the sunset exploding overhead into dramatic, colourful swirls, an artist’s assortment of radiant dark oranges and soft pink and purples melding together. The sun was a blinding bloody red disk settling to sink beneath the horizon. And like the curtains closing together to conclude a spellbinding scene, the sun disappeared behind the quarter moon and the sky was cloaked in gradual darkness.

The air, in itself, was like the puppeteer work of a faceless mage, or maybe even the mage itself. The enchantment of the elements faded with the evening, magic taken for granted, and he was seeing it up close. The clouds seemed so near, like he could reach out and stroke them. They seemed to be on the brink of crashing into the surface of the earth, catastrophically colliding to shatter reality to void, closing in all around him, daunting in their massive stature, they were so close.

He reached out, as if to stray his fingers through the cumulous, yet he felt nothing but the westerly breeze singing by.

It was his subconscious aspiration, the pursuit under the scores of layers over his persona. The compulsion was so simple; Kirk wanted to be like the air.

Though it was so simple in suggestion, it was also so complex to acquire.

How did one go about becoming the air? To feel weightless. To be impregnable; invincible. Impulsive. To capture the likeliness of the air, one had to be ubiquitous, ever-changing, calm, and tremulous.

To have the ability to escape into inexistence.

He wanted to be like air; like the breeze, like the current. Free to come and go when he pleased to whatever destination he felt in the throb of the internal compass to reach.

Kirk wanted that escape.

To be utterly invisible.

To disappear.

And he was just waiting…Waiting for a cloud to drift by and carry him away to oblivion, where he could feel the air lace through his veins.

Where he could fuse into its being and become an untouchable. Breathe sublimity as if it were saturated in his lungs. Master tranquility.

The sky seemed to swallow his soul; he seemed to bask and crumble at its breathtaking regal enchantment. Ethereal incentives stimulated through his bloodstream like acid burning through him to the extent of an utterly painless hype.

A spectre inside him, a fluttering dove, magnetized his heart to the skies. He belonged up there, where all the musings lie. All he had to do was look.

Just look.

Beyond that hill of clouds, northern-bound; somewhere just o’er the sun, somewhere just past where his eyes could reach. Just out of his reach. It was as if it brushed against his fingertips; it was so close to being in his possession, but not close enough.

How was it, to feel like the air feels?

To feel nothing?

Everything?

Eternity…

The air was perpetuity in itself, a living presence from the beginning of time; the reincarnation of every beast and being; the breath of everything that breathed; the thief of life, or the donor.

The heavens seemed to be one of the biggest enigmas he’s encountered.

Unfathomable.

Anyone who would attempt to define the supremacy, to put it in a little box, was offensively ignorant of the true splendor that hung over them like a lingering apparition.
It seemed so simple from an initial casual glance, but like any work of art, the longer you studied, the more of the intricacies you begin to vaguely interpret and appreciate.

Deeper investigation exposed a masquerade; something imminent and colossal patiently awaiting discovery, secured in the folds of subterfuge, observing the terrain below, omnipresent.

And one day, he would find it. One day. When it would be ready to be found, to be interpreted. For now, he’d remain a bystander. To respect the baffling conundrum he’s come to know. To be aware of its existence, though of what existence it was, exactly, he didn’t know.

To keep waiting. Maybe wait forever.

To keep dreaming.

After all, that was all he was, a free-thinker, a daydreamer. He could dream beyond the stars, but not exist to his aspirations.

He might’ve been never meant to interpret this primeval instinct that linked his heart to the clouds anymore than he was destined to uncover the meaning of life.

Perhaps, one day, if he dug deep enough in himself he could discover some worthwhile aspect he’d overlooked throughout the years, something beyond a dreamer.

Maybe, maybe…Maybe he was full of crap.

And maybe he was on to something. Who knows…?

Kirk fell asleep on the rooftop, thinking, daydreaming, as the cool September moon smiled down upon him.