Delve into Depths

What do you wanna be when you’ve grown up? 

Its a posing question each youth can’t avoid. Everyone must always be something, chase something, want something. I wonder what she’d say to that.

On the public bench outside of the grouchy man’s convenience store we found ourselves cooling in the sweet relief of ice cream on a hot summer’s day. 

She was off chewing right through it (impressive yet i’m a little scared at the same time) a few complains leaving her mouth as the original price raised from 20 to 30.

This is a dream why does currency still apply. 

Are her words of complaint.

I posed the question to her, settling the empty popsicle stick down facing the earth.

“Grow up? Never!” a low laugh escapes her, like a wind softly thrashing against curtains. Why so, i can’t understand. A childhood is only ever experienced once, you can stop aging once you become an adult but you can never be a child again. 

“But what you do you wanna be? I thought you told me you wanted to become an artist, or whatever other skills you were pursuing?”

“I am already those things.” pride can be sensed in her voice.

Thats a good thing for her. She knows the path she wants to tread on while mine is akin to  a vast view of uncertainty, free but lacks inclination, theres no direction.

How do i stay a child?

The noon passes on with two ticks of the short hand of a watch. A faint click on my wrist as a reminder of how short a passing evening really is.

“Lets walk back.” i offered with an outstretched hand for taking. She stands with me and we walk our way together. 

There was really no place nor destination, nor any home to go back to in this dream, maybe its to simply linger for a little longer in her presence — the fearless expressions of enjoyment i get whenever i am near her, and her near me.

Small words were exchanged back and forth in the same ways our footsteps raps against the pavement of this endless trail. She switches from humming to pointing out to the birds that flew by. 

Look! Two Chestnut munias threading on the electrical wire of the street. A pair of flitting wings illuminating itself in the background of the coral sky. 

Then from pointing back to humming.

I’d keep watch of her singing; curious with the look of daylight. And as if a wind of strings walloped me out from the skies, i felt soundness of mind.

“Why do you worry about being grown up anyway?” her voice cuts back into the narrative, sheepish to have been caught like this. 

“I don’t really know if i can ever love it.”

“Aren’t we always growing up though?”

“Thats the thing, it wont stop ever, right?”

“Never.”

That certainly pushes me deeper into the depths, to have been proven right is a scary thing. 

“I don’t really know what i wanna be.” the walk halts here for the moment, descending down the asphalt shore where the ocean ate back and about. She follows me behind, the crunch of stones beneath her feet beckons like a call, i turn to her.

“You can just be.”

Listen to me.

Her words are solemn and deep, i try to decipher around the constructs of it. “The state of being in its rawest form.”

My friend bended over and picked two stones, one which she placed upon my hand. “If you throw a rock over there…”

Here it goes.

“…will the ocean be called ‘rock ocean’?”

“Not.” after my reply she then tossed the stone to the waves causing a plop to resonate from afar.

“What about now?”

“Hah, i guess its still a no.”

“You’re like the ocean. You can have many things hidden and stored, attributes that makes up a character — coral fish, sunlight, pearls, sand— but the main reason the Ocean is, as is, is because of the water that gave it a body.”

“So you’re saying the life we posses is as is.”

“Is as is.” she repeats.

“You have certain play for words.”

“I can’t help it. It still make sense right?”

I gave her a nod of reassurance, “I get you.” though there is a certain impression given that there could be more to it than when heard for the first time. 

Perhaps if i write it down once i wake from this dream.

“You can throw that wishing rock into the water then. Throw it as far as the air can carry it so it reaches deeper parts.” And so i did with much strength i could convoke into the throw.

May i learn to love the vast view of things. Just as she loves the overview of the empyrean’s yonder.

“I do this a lot with my cousin when we would take a walk to the beach.” She picked up another stone giving it a long shot. 

“Throwing rocks?”

“Making wishes.”