I was daydreaming today

Always at the start of fasting come the vivid daydreams.

Like this:

I am sitting in a boat. It is a canoe of some sort perhaps, though for someone like me who knows nothing of boats or canoes, it hardly matters what sort. Let us say it is a canoe.

My back is to the boat’s front. The boat hurtles down a river towards something-I-know-not-what. All around me are other boats and in each sits someone I love, back to front, like me.

At the sides of this river are snow-capped mountains. Ancient trees of varying hues. Flora and fauna out of myth transform from plant to animal to mineral and back again, all in the blink of an eye it takes my boat to flash on by them.

From behind me comes a roar. Screams.

I know these screams.

My loved ones are going over a falls.

There’s an old man in this boat with me now. I did not see him before. His long gray beard and loose-fitting clothes flap in the wind as he tries to speak above the sounds of the river. He faces me, which means he faces forward, in the direction towards which we race.

These are instructions that he shouts. Rules on what to do when we hit the falls.

“Will you stop it, for pete’s sake?!” I say. “I am trying to use these moments to take in the scenery!”

Now he’s gone.

The roar grows closer, fills my ears.