a deep blue crystalline cloud

a short story in collaboration with mom

I opened my eyes and looked up, there was a deep blue cloud above me.

The cloud seemed to be crystalline. Reflecting light cast from an unknown source to my surroundings. I looked down at the floor. It shimmered in turquoise, cobalt, and lavender. There were six arch shaped windows, each framed with a different color stone. The tiles that made up the room changed color as I stared longer.

I didn’t know yet what waited for me in this room. Then I noticed a ladder to my right. It led up into the blue crystalline cloud above me. I took a deep breath and started climbing. My nails were the same crystalline blue color of the cloud. My skin shimmered here. It was almost transluscent, shifting colors in a way that seemed to blend with what laid behind it.

I stepped out onto the cloud, it was a hard surface that felt like it was made out of crystal glass. I found mom sitting on a velvet purple armchair, she was reading a newspaper and wearing her sky blue wire framed glasses that seemed to see through dimensions.

She peered at me from above her glasses and tilted her head, “cherah be man sar nazadee?” we both laughed. It was something persian grandmothers often said when time goes by and you haven’t visited. It means, why haven’t you come to see me?

“Time moves differently here. It’s like no time has passed for me, but I understand how Earth can be.” she patted the ottoman to her left and I sat beside her. She poured me a cup of tea from a teapot to her right and handed it to me.

“I feel like I can get lost in this world I made up.”

“You think you made it up?” she raised an eyebrow at me, then nodded in acceptance, “Oh, no that does makes sense. It’s better that way. This is all happening in your beautiful imaginative mind. Why not?” she smiled like she was keeping a secret it was too soon to share with me. “Anyway, you won’t get lost. Your mind is too strong for that. You wouldn’t let yourself fall too far down the rabbit hole.”

I thought of her words, thought of how careful I tend to be and nodded. “You’re right. You’re right.” I paused for a moment to sip my tea. It glowed yellow and red and tasted like roses and saffron.

“This can become whatever you wish it to become, jooneman. Whatever you dream, can be created here. You can ask me anything.”

I sat with that, nodding slowly. “I feel like there’s so much pressure.”

She shook her head immediately, “That’s not yours, let me take it.” She reached a hand out, waved it over my head and I quite literally saw a glowing black and red ball of stress and tension emerge into her palm. She stood and placed it into a tile in the wall to her right. It was now trapped there, and I felt lighter.

I exhaled deep and nodded. “Whoa, okay.”

“Yes, it’s fun here isn’t it? All that you need to try very hard to pretend and fool yourself to see on Earth, you can see here.” she now had a glowing ball of gold in between her palms, she held it floating in her left hand and picked a strand out and started placing it where she removed the pressure from. “This is love. Pure love.”

She handed me the remainder of the glowing ball and I held it in my hand. It seemed to bloom and wilt all at once in cycles of death and birth that seemed to take place over the course of all of time.

“Oh wow, okay, that makes sense.” I sighed into a laugh. It was relief. It was placing understanding. Peace, more than anything.

“You can keep it.” she motioned at the glowing gold floating ball. It floated out from my hand and circled my head then rested on my knee. “It’s yours. You’ve had it with you already, you all do on Earth. But now, you can see it, you can hold it, you can understand deeper what it is the longer you spend with it here.”

I passed it between my two hands as she spoke. It glowed brighter in shades of pink and light blue. I saw everything in it. That’s the best way I could describe it in this moment at least. It flickered and changed and stayed the same all at once. I tried doing what she did, picking out strands of love and placing them in her palm, around her head, toward her heart. I held it closer to my heart, it dissolved from something that felt physical into something that felt like air. Magnetized air. With one more motion of my hand, the glowing ball was now inside my heart. You might also be able to find it in your heart now if you’re reading this.

“That’s it. Exactly that.” she leaned back in her arm chair and took a sip of her glowing red and orange tea that tasted of rose and saffron that seemed to be made from the same material as that glowing orb she handed to me.

I chuckled and nodded once. “I get it.”

“Of course you do. You always did. No more questioning it.” she held out a pinky, an unspoken way to have me promise.

I reached out and locked my pinky with hers, shaking once and affirming, “No more questioning it.”