THE LAKE (Edit from "BLITHEWOOD")

Having lived before, will live again, Time for her is less a river than a lake. Placid, still, it laps out to shores that never touch, touches bottom at a point just beneath breathing, breathes back and forth with the illusion of wind on water but never moves beyond. All the action, as they say, happens out of sight.

And she falls into it, like a ballerina, long auburn hair splayed on the top of the water in a spiral that swirls down with her as she begins her stroke. And she swims through Time, takes hers, and when her graceful underwater pirouette is done, she breaks the surface to draw another breath.

And she is no closer to the shore, still in the middle of the vast, warm bath that simultaneously exasperates and caresses her, and then she sees him on the far shore. He is thirty, he is fifteen, he is eighty, he is nine. He is all men, all ages, and he stoops to touch the lapping at his feet. And she feels him and does not feel him, a disturbance through liquid Time that leaves a dull ache of unfulfilled contact, a ghost.

And it wracks her, this ghost of touch, and she begins to weep. And she slowly submerges, another languorous plunge into Time, and her tears mix with the waters and press that far edge just that one infinitesimal tear further, another drop out of reach, another wave to the man on the shoreline, never to return.