Sparkle
Sparkle, then fade. The dew was dim, transparent now, the fantastic glitter forgotten a moment ago, mere water remained.
It hung close to the edge of silver metal, a tiny drop that was invisible when taken in perspective with the whole car, but when the world found time to see this part of the bumper, a dew drop held occupancy, a morning spent on a car foreign to the city it was in.
A moment ago, it was shone brightly, blinding the world with an explosion of light. That second, the universe hid behind a singular drop of water, it was everywhere, everything, it was the only thing important in the world. But that second had passed, and the light had gone just as fast as it came.
The car it was clinging to had a similar experience to share. For one night, the car drove along highways, through roads enveloped by trees, under the moonlight and stars, alone, and was everything to the world. That car drove, and everything that existed was in that car, and the wonders around it. For one passage of time, a mere few hours taken, that car was everything, the only thing that mattered. It existed, and the universe fell behind. The moon shone overhead, the clouds disappeared for a night, and the car orbited a galaxy all its own. Nothing existed beyond the metal frames of the automobile; the nature outside was merely a dream.
There were no buildings that stole you away from home, no jobs that polluted the precious experience of meeting people for the first time, no empty rules that killed so much life, in every and all ways; there were no expectations dreamt by everyone else; there was no world of reality, of friends that forgot the true meaning of the word, of lives that demanded to be lived, lives that shook and throttled, forced you to do things that you believed you believed in. For one night, you lived without a past or future; you lived without a present. For a few hours, the world you lived in only played the music you liked to hear on the radio.
But, as a moment ended and killed the sparkle of a dew, the car came to rest near the break of dawn, outside tiny shop that fixed cars and sold coffee at the same time. The world that was a car had vanished, swallowed whole back into a much larger, more massive, yet no more important world. The car rested, and its gods rested as well, though gods no more, merely human beings when they awoke, their godliness would only seem like a dream to them. The universe took back its place, and everything was back into its distorted perspective. The world of a dew ended, the world of a car also died, the glimpse of something larger, more important than a whole universe was gone, a memory burned in the minds of those you dream to be gods.
When the human beings awoke, sober from the drunken ecstasy of owning the world, they resumed back to the road, in the car that was only a car once again. And a dew drop that dreamed of being heaven, blew away, a world that sparkled, then faded.
By Don Bernal