WALKING ON WATER
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"What's a metaphor?" she would ask.
"I don't know," I would answer.
The river was my home. It was like the place where everyone went after they died. Their spirits shooting out of their bodies, and into the rushing riverside. I always believed that what I was hearing was just a metaphor. But then...
...What is a metaphor?
When my husband and I moved to Mineral Town, we discovered so much more inside of us. We suddenly wanted to open a supermarket. I still don't understand why, but open a supermarket we did. Both of us weren't that good with names, so we called it Mineral Groceries. Crap, but as realistic as it was going to get.
After I gave birth to our daughter, I began to exercise more and more frequently. Some tell me that Elli and Tim, who work at the town clinic, told them that I was overweight. I prayed that that wasn't the reason why I had begun exercising.
I soon realized that (as I had expected) being overweight was not the reason I always went out to power-walk or do aerobics. It was the river... I had to be near it. There was no river back where I grew up, so being close to something so beautiful was... different.
"What's a metaphor?" she would ask again.
"Shut up!" came my reply.
Then all at once, reality overcame me. I died.
I still don't understand how the world works... even as I sleep under this rushing stream. Maybe it was me against the world, and I was at the bottom of the staircase. Why wasn't I able to climb it? It seemed like I would always just keep falling flat on my face.
When my daughter eventually died, she came to me, and we both sat on the bottom of the river. She looked all around with glee, and said, "MOM! I was right! I knew that people shot into the river after their passing!"
I suppose she was right.
If I'm ever offered the chance to watch the future generations of my family, I climb out of the river and walk over to the supermarket and say, "It's not remarkable. It's not anything out of the ordinary. And it's certainly not... traditional. It's called sympathy... and it's created with trust mixed with a touch of life. I'll always believe."
"What's a metaphor?" she asked me again today.
I get up, look at her and reply, "Whatever you want it to be."
Then I lay back down, and watch the water rush above me. It's like I'm floating on water and drifting away down the river. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps a metaphor isn't what you want it to be, but what you feel. I still don't know, and I don't think I ever will... but as for now...
...I'm drifting down the river.
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AN: Okay, this is the first thing I've ever posted on Fanfiction! Since I'm new at this thing, please don't flame me! >>
I hope you enjoyed it one way or another! Peace out for now!
metaphor: a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literallydenote in order to suggest a similarity