Nebula at Sea

Act III. A Tale of Death and Rebirth / The Paradigm Shift

A tourist steps into the office

wearing a loose buttoned shirt, untucked

adorned with a field of pixelated flowers

red, blue, yellow, and a slight hint of orange

matching the vibrancy of the unwashed shorts

splattered with a paint of butterflies

playfully dancing through the imaginary sparkles

emanating from the tourist's sharp eyes

forever fixated at a certain invisible point

millions of miles from where the tourist is standing

yet always perfectly level to the tourist's pupils

a certain somewhere, far from my goals

too perilous, too foreboding the path will be

if I were to walk along it

but how would I know?

I've never taken the first step

all these while, always putting a little too much belief

onto the opinions of others

however oblivious, however obnoxious

and twist them to be a mold of my own young mind

a skewed perspective of the harshness of reality

a lack of understanding of what makes the world

a habitat that I deserve to take shelter in

I stand behind the tourist

perfectly shadowed away from the blinding light

of the office draped in white

I listen to the tourist speak

wise words to the source of light

"Life is a neverending cycle

we wake up, we work, we go back home, we sleep

and everything falls apart as we fall asleep

tomorrow, and every tomorrow after tomorrow

everything rises again as we rise awake

but what if

I'm not saying it will happen, but just what if

one day when we rise awake

we see that everything is at stake?"

The tourist sheds off their skin

the hard, restrictive exoskeleton

a hope for humanity

exhibited so blatantly on the office floor

carpeted in purple, like a pile of beautiful dust

shimmering through the skies

never ending their lies

The tourist holds my hand

and brings me on a stress-free walk

through a man-made garden in the office

on the twenty-fifth floor of a sustainable building

built by the bruised hands of an underwater person