Reality hugger

From this side of the Kaw River, the tree trunks on the other side extend up into the air and also down into the water, the surface hardly impedes their passage. A thick and rough line of a bank of green and drying grasses marks a boundary.

Why should one reality be more real than the other?

I could walk across the bridge, step closer and put my hands on the trunks growing up into the air. That would be something. But the trunks that were apparently growing down into that other reality will have vanished from my earlier vantage point from across the river. Are they gone, or what if I simply lack the ability to penetrate the surface of what I have always called a reflected reality. If I stick my arm into the water, it will only get wet.

This reality where I stand now seems so much more tangible. The rock I sit back down on is a hard seat. There are sounds waving into my ears, birds that I imagine but cannot see. Waves on the river, smoothed by strong current. White foam on chocolate water, swirling, reflecting a world that I, myself, am immersed in.

Some days, sometimes at small moments of time at a time, I wonder about the surfaces that divide realities. This world up here has seed heads of grasses along my path. A ladybug minding her business. Bindweed, with its miniature morning glory white flowers, twines.

My hands – the whorls on my outstretched fingertips - feel. The breeze slips passed my cheek. Maybe it will rain from the clouds, fuzzy gray, overhead, and I will get wet.

I could swim across the river from here. And get wet. Maybe this river is too wide for me.

Is everything like that – life and death?

This world seems real enough. I can quench my thirst with ice water. I can bite into a sandwich.

But what if you look into my eyes, past the surface into an inner other world. What do you see? Am I your illusion? Are you my reflection?

I can hug my arms around your body. That is something.