The man wished to float, so he danced. He watched birds. He treaded the halls like a doe in season, toe-first and gingerly, gingerly, but the floorboards betrayed him with a Winchester crack, so he dieted: strawberries and cotton balls, the diet of sprites. He began to feel light, golden, like corn that shucks itself, but it wasn’t enough to remain substantial. He wanted to render physical living—sound, friction, solidity—a thing of the Stone Age. He stopped eating, prayed for ribs, and watched his skin tighten to ice. It sparkled. 

He was freeing the parts that no longer served, the ills and unhappiness of being a body in the world, and, gliding on the sediments of his former being, he was no longer a man but a kind of sylph, finer than tissue, dancing to the xylophone under his shirt. He wore silk. Now chiffon. Now burn costumes and be aerosol. He was everything that floated: a sea jelly, a black iris, a glint, a ghost. He died on his feet, and it is said he never fell because there was nothing to hit the ground. 

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Katherine P. F. Holmes is an English teacher and writer. Her work has been published in Litbreak Magazine, Capulet Magazine, Cauldron Anthology, and Illinois’s Emerging Writers. She lives in Boston.