Soft music sifts through the radio like colorful wisps of smoke. It’s one of those wordless, instrumental songs that I pretend to find boring but that actually fills my soul when the violin gets intense. I laugh to cover my secret, that an instrument could be prettier than any voice. Then the piano that has thus far only been background crashes in, demanding why I dared to ignore it, strumming down on the keys like anger, hot and thick. The violin slicing through the air is sharper than any knife. The violin, the piano, they fight. I bounce from drum to drum, feeling the music vibrate through me to the beat of my pulse. The guitar is screeching in my ears and I love it. Life runs through the rhythms, dripping through the seams.

I’m in the car on the way home from seeing the Christmas lights at the zoo. Except I’m not. The car is a faraway place I haven’t thought of in a long time. Right now I stand blind and alone in an endless room. Only, I’m not alone. The music moves through my body, electrifying it. All at once, with my head knocking and my feet tapping, my fingers drumming, the song ends. I look around the car, to the front seats where my parents are driving, oblivious to the godly entity that just passed through our vehicle. My sister gives me a look of awe. She knows. I don’t need to say a word; neither does she. And we don’t. We sit in our respective seats, our minds racing a mile a minute but our tongues keeping still.

Through the window, lights dazzle the river. Under the water must be another world, one where things from the human world cast the strangest shadows. A world where fish swim and seaweed wraps around discarded objects from above. The reflection of the lights on the water is more vivid and colorful than the lights themselves. I’d like to have wings and glide along the rushing river. Dip the tips of my fingers in. Send ripples warping those glimmering lights. I’d fly. Fly much faster than this car, and much higher. My wings would take me to the clouds, where I could cast my own shadow on the world below. I’d let the wind rush in my ears, numb my cheeks, and tickle my toes.

Four worlds exist all so close to me. The world where I sit blind with the music. The world where the fish swim underneath the shadows. The world where I fly above the clouds, weightless and chilly. Lastly, the real world inside my car. This is the world where real things happen. It is where I am, where my sister is, where my parents are.

At that moment, I wonder something. If I could travel to all those places in a span of a few minutes, all while sitting in my minivan, where is my sister? Where are my parents? Where do we go when the only place we can go is inside our own minds?