Floating Staircase(102)

I crossed through the trees and walked the path.

Soon I was standing on the crest of an enormous precipice overlooking a blanket of green fields, Technicolor in its greenness, and they appeared to go on forever. There was a stream that wound through the valley passing directly below me, bisecting the field into perfect halves. The banks of this stream were well manicured and flanked by great bursts of colorful flowers. Some were colors I’d never seen before, and my brain had some difficulty processing them at first.

Carefully, I scaled down the side of the precipice and into the valley. The stream wove through the flowers just inches from my feet. The surface was as smooth as glass; the flowers crowding its banks were reflected as if in a mirror. Something made me touch the water. A single extended index finger barely touching the surface sent a widening ripple of rings across the surface. The flowers’ reflections trembled and fell apart.

I stood and followed the stream through the valley. It wasn’t until I’d traveled halfway across the field that I realized I was not alone. The sensation was overwhelming and undeniable, yet I felt oddly at peace. Giddy, almost. And as I continued across the field, the morning sun at my back, I thought I glimpsed on a few occasions more than my own shadow in the grass in front of me.

Before I knew it I was standing at the other end of the field, an intimidating wall of pine trees blocking my passage. The stream continued on, winding through the forest, those colorful plumes of flowers like lights on an airport runway in the shade beneath the trees. Hunching down, I entered the woods, creeping under the low-hanging branches. The sun was immediately blotted from the sky. I could feel the forest breathe me in.

The woods were dense, but I noticed sunlight through the branches up ahead: another clearing. As I advanced in that direction, I also could see the reflection of the sky on the ground, and I realized that I was looking at a lake. For whatever reason, this caused me to hasten my pace. I hurried along and finally broke out into fresh daylight on the other side. Before me, spread out like a smear of smoked black glass, was an immense body of water, so magnificent that I could barely make out the trees across the way on the other side of the reach.

I stood there by the edge of the water for some time, letting the sun warm my back and shoulders. Cream-colored water lilies drifted across the surface of the lake, cartwheeling lazily over the reflection of my own face.

Kyle was here. The realization was like a car crash, an explosion. Kyle was here. I could taste his memory in the air, could catch the fleeting scent of him on the passing breeze. Dropping to my knees, I leaned over the rocky edge of the lake and brushed the lilies off my reflection. The water was so cold I could feel my bowels clench. My image rippled and glittered and after a moment reassembled itself again. It was me—only me—staring back at myself. Still, I did not move. I held my breath, not wanting to exhale and disturb the water. I wanted to see him so badly. But it was me, only me. I recognized my eyes, my freshly cut hair, the structure of my facial bones beneath my tanned skin. I recognized the slightly crooked bend to my nose and the faint dimple on my chin.

Only me.

Crestfallen, I crawled away from the water on my hands and knees. I couldn’t bring myself to stand, not just yet. Then I laughed. It tumbled out of me, uncontrolled. And with it came tears that dropped straight from my eyes into the bright green grass. Laughing and crying, laughing and crying.

I’m sorry, Kyle. I love you, Bro.

But I didn’t have a dimple on my chin.

I was you.

I sprang forward and nearly dumped myself into the lake. Staring over the side, I once again faced my reflection and scanned the face, recognizing everything I’d always known about me . . . yet catching, in flickering flashbulb images, details that were completely foreign to me . . . emotions that did not exist in my catalogue, expressions that I did not possess in my reserve . . .

“Kyle,” I whispered.

I was you.

And who’s to say he wouldn’t have been? Who’s to say he wouldn’t have been me?

I was you.

“Yes,” I said, seeing him, seeing him, the laughter unavoidable now, my tears spilling into the water and dispersing the reflection, “yes, yes you are, yes, yes you are, yes, yes—”



Something like three months later, in a bright little studio apartment in San Diego, I was accosted by an urge. Without thinking, without reservation, I stood and went into the bedroom. I knelt on the floor and felt around inside the clapboard trunk at the foot of the bed. When I found the notebook I was looking for, I carried it, along with a ballpoint pen, out onto the porch that overlooked the Gaslamp Quarter where, in the promise of a fading summer, I began to write.