3.27.09-1

Robert grasped the stainless steel railings glimmering in the bright afternoon sun and hoisted himself up onto the diving board. The artificially blue pool water below heaved and rippled as it swallowed the scrawny pink body of the the boy who had just sprung from the low dive beneath him.
Robert remembered how his grandmother had taught him about Jesus--about how he had walked on water. She said he had done all of his miracles by the power of faith.
She drew him up into her arms: "If you believe enough," she had whispered in his ear, "there's nothing you couldn't do."
He took a few steps forward and found himself precariously suspended high above the water, gently bobbing up and down on the warbling tip of the board.
He wondered if he could put one foot in front of the other and walk off the edge without falling.
He closed his eyes; felt the wet grit of the board beneath his feet, the smell of chlorine, and the sound of splashing which seemed so, so far below him.
He stretched his arms, lowered his head, bent his knees, and pressed his all of his meager weight down into the board before allowing it to rebound and return the energy he had lent it. His legs became pistons as they straightened--hips, knees, ankles, arches, toes. Finally, he felt his feet leave the sandpaper surface.
And then there was silence. He hung perfectly suspended between the rippling blue crystal below and the bottomless depth of the sky above. Everything slowed, and for a split second, he understood.
It was only after he opened his eyes again that he realized he had been falling.
He hit the water in a flailing crash before it engulfed and cradled him in it's quiet heavy blueness. It pulled him closer and whispered in his ear. And there beneath the surface he continued to float--suspended between the horizons.