electric from fingertips.

I stand in the living room and look out the big windows at the trees. All naked and scrawny. Not good for climbing. Not strong with thick leaves and fat branches you can swing up on and climb into and disappear. Sometimes from somewhere over my bed at night, I look down and I see me. I'm not that little kid anymore, I'm not all lazy and warm and bad. I'm just this bigger kid.

Shifting through the sands of time, like eternity can last only one small second in your mind. Flipping through the pages of an old, worn book that tells the story of millions ...

it's two pages long.  

The print is large but the book seems so small, clutched by a little boy of six who knows everything about everyone because he read the book fifty million times over. 

He read about wars, lovers, peace, hatred, sadness ... life. All in a few minutes. Just a few minutes of his wasting day, as the sands of his life drift slowly out of a large jar by his feet that has his name sketched in red on the front. He picks up the fallen sand and puts it back in, with hopes that by doing so, his life would last a little longer, but this only makes his life shorter. So he's stopped caring about the sand and just stands there, holding onto the book of time, a blank expression on his pale face. 

He's seen more than any child the age of six ever should but he found this book and pasted it to his mind; threaded the needle and fished it through his right hand, attaching himself to the book. Dry blood clings from his now old and worn hand; they're the first to age. His right hand looks that of an old man's who has been through far worse and now holds the weight of time, not the world (time is much heavier), in the palm of what would look to be an eighty-year-old's hand. He's counting down the minutes until it falls completely off his wrist and to the floor. When that day comes, he'll do his best to weave some more thread and lace himself with the book once more; maybe on his leg this time or his still young shoulder. 

Until that day comes,
he just waits,
ages,
and watches as other people's lives
slip helplessly and soundlessly
into a great abyss of forever.

The keyboard hammered into my brain as my complacent fingers soared over the strategically placed keys. I felt as though I was invading the spots that they held; each one cursing me as I typed. But in that moment, I didn't care, I had too many things that had to be said, had to be stated, had to be written down. My fingers outlined and traced a life that was once my own but now that it was down on the screen in front of me, it was no longer mine to claim. It took on a tactical life of its own and, soon, it had become something I no longer knew, no longer could affiliate with. I was only the typist; I was not the one in the story anymore.

Before I could release my fingertips from the enticing letters that drew out a story of heartache, love, mystery, and life, I knew that something was being created … and it was beautiful. The screen mocked me and challenged me to do better but nothing seemed to fit. I tried different words for the same meaning; life, existence, being, time, living, verve, days, weeks, years … but none of them could describe what the electricity was creating.

That's what I called it; 

electricity. 

My own personal current of time and space and, most importantly, thoughts. The words would form in my mind, move down through my arm like an electric current as it picked out pieces of the story it liked, and bolted from my fingertips to the keys that cursed me as I continued to hammer out the life that I was creating. The life of an atomic bomb, maybe. Or a child who lived in a far away county. Or maybe it was a fairy tale; a beautiful temptress with long flowing hair who tricks her lover into marrying her for his money; wait, that was my mother, not a fairy tale.