THREE WORLDS

"The water's surface isn't a world. It's an in-between. Like . . . ." He drags on his cigarette, exhales a steady stream of smoke. "Like an almost something that's really nothing. A nearly nothingness that lies between the above and the below."

We're on the edge of the quarry pond. He stoops, staring into the water. "A cloud shimmering on the still pool . . . a fish stirs under the water. You remember that one?"

"I do."

"It's an ellipsis, a breath between, separating the two. The third world — it's our world. It's us. Us outside looking at the trees' reflections, the leaves, a fish."