and floating feels like an understatement now, as water levels drop instead of rise and the clouds are closer than ever. i spend every night wishing on stars that soon we will be standing on those clouds, the moon our next stop. i guess you never really anticipate the heaviness that can be presented to you so suddenly and i am floating on rain clouds back down to earth. somewhere on my journey down a familiar light stops me like an old friend and i stay, hovering above the lake i so often wished to be apart of. the darkness that surrounds me chuckles in time with the pounding in my chest, the kind of alarm that rings only at 3am. those dreams of thunderstorms have overstayed their welcome and i am the one doing the evicting this time.

but this is not the end. suspended by newly sewn strings i see a countdown forming above the glowing city, a reminder that nothing has ever stopped us before. we conquered the funeral and flowers grow from my fading graves. we've climbed hills that feel like
mountains to sit on the moon. we are still roughly 581 days away from the beginning and i have come to accept that maybe the stars were never spelling out "closed" but rather "not open yet". the grey mass that fills the air is the last curtain before the grand opening.

and that glowing city is as clear as ever and for the first time ever the end credits are rolling backwards.