Prophet

Today, I witnessed a very rare phenomenon--the strangest and most wondrous of all. Today, for exactly fifteen minutes, the earth stood still.

It happened just when the sky was about to fade pink-orange to indigo-grey. As if being hushed into prayer, the clouds held their breaths mid-sentence and dared not make a sound. The crescent moon hung overhead, watchful and unblinking. The water in the pool froze like glass, wondering why the breeze had fled. The pygmy palm trees formed little question marks with their fronds at their reflections in the water.

I sat motionless for what must have been five minutes before I thought of standing. The world was alive. I was alive, just intentionally unmoving. For fifteen minutes, each second felt electric, like the anticipation when someone reaches out to you for an embrace. It's when you feel everything at once: fear, comfort, pain, reassurance; you do nothing but feel. You let it happen, and you saw that it was good.

Soon, the wind returned, and the clouds sighed, gradually refilling the dramatic poeticisms of the ending day. What could it all have meant--that for fifteen minutes today, the world existed in prose?