I fell off the edge of the sidewalk today
While walking, wandering, daydreaming,
Thinking of making
A left turn
Or a right
Or going back the way I came.
I wasn’t sure where this path led.
But they said I’d know if I followed,
And so, I did.

Mid step I felt my foot slip
And I fell
And fell
And fell
…
SPLASH
Submerged head to toe in black,
I found myself in an inky pond.

The sky above was white, and I could no longer see the sidewalk,
Or the clouds or the sun, or the birds,
And the pond was bare of spiders and frogs and fish,
White walls encased me, and beneath me,
The ink seeped into my shoes, staining my toes.

But in the distance, lay the edge of the pond,
The only edge, like the edge of the earth
And so to the grayscale shore I swam.
The ink painting my skin the colour of the night sky,
And the white above stretching further, ever expanding.

The grass past the shore was the colour of snow,
Spilled white onto each blade, meticulously coated.
There was no road or sidewalk, just an endless winter-esque field.

But I had nowhere else to go
And so I set my path forward,
and forward,
and forward,
Across the shore and the field,
Wandering, daydreaming, thinking of the sidewalk
And who’d fix the edge, and who’d clean up the pond
And my clothes,
Still coated in ink,
And who’d colour the sky and put up the sun?

Until I just so happened to look back
Behind me, my shoes had left prints on the ground,
Like markings in a fairy tale forest,
And they’d started to blend into one.

I see,
So, there was a little sidewalk behind me,
A little road I was making.
Even if I didn’t exactly know where I was going.