Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories

by Cookie Mueller

Everyone, all over the world, wants to be in movies. It's modern human nature, a new biological urge, a twentieth-century physiogenesis. People feel compelled to be on the screen.

There was no moon. The sky was like black cotton batting that enveloped us in a way that felt like walking through clear water in a pool painted black. Very clear and cloudless was the night sky, so it was thick with stars. We even saw clusters of the dust from exploded supernovas deep in space, thousands of light years away.

Was there no way other than time to heal a broken heart? Time took too much time. By then I'd be dead.