THE HORIZON

Her bony finger pointed at the horizon beyond the window, the corners of which were caked with grime and the ruins of cobwebs, the carcasses of their inhabitants strewn across the pane like gravel leading up to a wooden door. She then brought her lips close to his ears. “That’s where the sky meets the ground.” She told him “The amazing thing about the horizon is everyone’s seen it, but no one’s actually been there.” To Benjamin, those words pretty much conveyed his life. He’d seen it all; wonders splattered across the pages of his favorite novels, tales of faraway kingdoms encrusted within the folds of the dog-eared paper, the magnitude of the journey almost bursting out of the parchment in the small elevations that were prints of letters on a page. But he’d never actually been anywhere. No, he’d been contained within the walls of that asylum like a fish in a tank ever since authorities feared he would wound up a schizophrenic mess like his mother and embark on his own attempts to steal his life. But to him, life had been stolen long before he was cleared of the diagnosis. And for that exact same interval of time, he’d been witnessing his own life ensue from behind one grimy window at a time. Benjamin’s head lolled to the side as he took in the scenery with eyes as lifeless as an elderly told he had a few hours to live. He could imagine himself walking along the thin strip of existence that was the interface between sky and earth, arms aloft to maintain his balance. The sole connection between the two infinities. One day, he thought in the deepest crevices of his mind, the folds where ambitions are incarnated, I’m going to go there. I will be the first person to walk on the horizon.