Is it spring?

May be it's spring. May be it's not. May be it's just a gargoyle giggling inside. May be it's love.

I have a strange soaring feeling inside my stomach. Like my innards have taken flight. Like I'm flapping my wings, freed of limbs I don't want. Like I'm lying face down on a thick mattress of air, weightless, drifting forward slowly, stealthily - floating on a bank of skycotton, and seeing no lines, no shapes, no symmetry. No crayon horizon. No fluffy clouds. I see nothing but myself, not even you. May be it's just spring after all.

The weather is lovely. It is the weather of colours, but it's actually not, because real colour doesn't exist, it's all in your head. Dye is just dye, but it whispers of colour, so you believe it. I cannot face these colours. They are passionate, they are violent. I cannot face love's colour or colour's love: it is too intense, it frightens me.

I want to swim. It has been years since I've actually swum. I want to swim right now, because the weather says so. I want to dive in, and feel the water close over my head, feel the cool deep heal me in an instant. I want to stretch my body out on the surface of the heaving cool, my arms and legs extended, at peace with the sky and the water and the world. I want to slice the water with my arm and feel it sweep over my back, then over the rest of my body. I want to turn my face skywards as I come up for breath; catching, at each rise, a glimpse of the lamp-posts - blurry circles of inconsistent light in my water-stained eyes. I want to beat the water with my feet, pulling myself forward, ever forward, towards the far side, my final destination, my only destination, beyond which there is nothing else. I want to sweep to the end with one last armful of water, and hoist myself up over the edge, gasping for breath. I want to dive back in, and glide along the bottom of the pool like an eel, till I can hold my breath no more, and must re-surface. And then, after I have worn my body out, I want to rise from the water, sweeping the hair out of my eyes, as the water breaks away from me and plummets back into the pool unwillingly. It will dribble down my back and down my arms and legs as I jog around the edge of the pool towards the changing room. And the goosebumps on my arms and legs, suddenly chilled by the touch of air, will slowly subside.

It is spring, it is spring.