Naivety

• Anita Grassy, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2012

If I were to lay down here with the world beneath my feet and no fear of falling to the ground… would the sky be the limit? These stars, just paving the way to blissful shores, a place where I wouldn’t need to want anymore.

I don’t need to know any better, because right here underneath the stars and above the world, this is all I need. This life, it’s the air that I breathe. You and I, we’ve got more time than we can count to climb these trees and to see this city one more time. So just stop for a moment. Breathe. Breathe in freedom.

Imagine.

If we were to tread the water, the rapids running below, flying through the river as though it carried all the mysteries of Ingo, there’d be no need to think of anyone but us. No need to run when we are free like the wind, free like the water and standing on top of the world with nothing but silence between us and reality. As still and as quiet as we want to be, to listen, to understand feeling… to know these things, it’s all right here.

If you breathe with your eyes closed, you can feel your heart beating. It beats for us; just breathe.

There’s something in the northern lights, a story that you and I have told so many times, but still we’re only children inside. There’s nothing in the footprints we’ve left here, words that just seem to fade and disappear, revealing a mystery. The mystery of what we can’t see. Some call it naivety.

We try to break it down to a science. Chemicals, reactions – but I see beyond your shell. I see the underlying mysteries of this world that even science cannot explain. Even when I can’t see, I've learned to listen.

If you’re listening hard enough you can hear a thousand hearts beating just like ours. If you breathe, you breathe with someone – too in time to be alone. We may be children, but even children know that you need to breathe. Even children know that you need love.

So you and I; we lie here, breathing slowly in time. The world beneath our feet; no fear of falling to the ground. The world is turning ever so silently…quiet enough for me to hear your heartbeat.

And if to love is merely naivety, then I am quite happy to be naïve.