003/2012 High Dive

Word Count: 263

It was wondrous, joyous, everything they’d promised it would be. That amazing and terrible moment when you take the dare, crush all inside of you threatening your freedom of fear. When you come face to face with that monster in your mind that your mother assured you did not exist. When you fly through the air and crash through the veil of the water below and the bubbles rise like white shiny stars to the surface. Your fingers waving pale and desperate to catch them in your hands. Your hair fanning out in flags of celebration. Your feet flicking like the silver fish at this intrusion in their world.

And amid all those last loud jeers that turned to cheers as you flew scared and proud from the highest bank by the river where the others stood and urged you on, when their keenest support turned away in disinterest  as you hit like a stone in a rainbow splash, when you didn’t come back up for lifesaving air, they weren’t watching.

So you cling to that all important moment, that confirmation that despite your trepidation and disbelief, you had it in you after all. But the feeling of belonging that you sought, that made you take that final step to prove yourself, that cloak of validation from your peers; you’ll never taste the victory more than for that instant as you sink into the arms of the sun-warmed river. And you wonder if they’ll always remember that at least you had leapt into the summer, at least for a moment you’d flown.