#30: Awake

"Are you awake?"

The soft voice could have come from my own head; in the dark I couldn't tell.

I rolled over.

And it came rushing back to me. All of it. The way I almost drown when I was five, just a month before getting Castle Grayskull for Christmas; the time I made a pinch-pot in the fourth grade, sitting next to the blond girl who I had a crush on; running away from security guards with my brother and our friends, laughing; the Grand Canyon; a car accident I saw in New Mexico, the people I watched die; moving to a new city by myself, learning without studying; Vermont, green and with snow; Erik and how he left the world; the time I died when I was 26, reborn in the same place during the same instant, looking down on a smaller version of me; doing it again a year later, but seeing clearly how this one was so much more than I could ever be.

I reached out to hold her hand in the dark.

I wanted to tell her that 30 years ago, I jumped into the abyss and was still falling. I'm staring down to the bottom of Grand Canyon now, feeling smaller and less important, but less lost.

When I stop falling, I know she'll be there to see me off.

"I'm awake," I say.

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