How It Feels to Float

by Helena Fox

They say observation affects reality, that it can pin an electron into place. Until then, the electron is just a possibility, just an idea. Until it’s seen, it might as well not exist.

It feels like an unrelenting urge to lay your head down on the table, wherever you are, whomever you are with.

It’s a beautiful thing, Elizabeth, isn’t it? To love this much?”

I rise out of the ocean every day and you could do it too, at least, you could if you’d been born a burning nuclear mass instead of that fragile human body.

Life is terrible and beautiful, isn’t it? It’s the best/worst at the exact same time, all possibilities at once. I guess it’s whatever it is when you observe it. And a second later, it’s something else. Now it’s something else again. Now it’s something else.

Mum can’t help but laugh because she knows. How it is. To be in this place, in this moment, under this sun, for as long as you can be, for as long as you get. For as long as you can stay to see what might happen next.