this time

there was a faint smell of sulfur
as the machine cracked in my hand.
it was the sound of popping knuckles
which reverberated in my ears
as i stared down at the brass sphere
between my fingers,
hooked between index and thumb.
purple electricity flashed across
my eyes
and it felt as if
my skin
were shedding
from
my muscles,
one particle at a time.
every hair on my body
stood on end
like needles separating
from my pores.
the world spun around me,
and suddenly,
the room
in which i had been standing,
evaporated
until all that was left was a blue hum
that shot through with blinding white
and the deepest black
of oceans swallowed by space,
smearing the outlines of stars
across my eyes.
i could not breathe.
my chest would not move.
the taste of sulfur,
stronger now,
threatened the pressure
expanding in my throat.
and all at once,
there was silence.
the purest void with which
i have ever experienced.
it was an all encompassing quiet
that hushed even the calmest atom
of my being.
i looked again,
and at my feet,
playing in the sand,
unaware, fearless,
unabated,
was i
as a child of no older than five,
playing by a set of swings in the clean
swept sand, looking up at the man
he would become.
i said, "don't worry,
it gets better. some day you'll go
even pass your own imagination."
and my child as me smiled
and gave a tender nod.
i pressed the brass sphere
tightly into my palm
and the sulfur was faint again at my lips.
and there again was the hushed energy
which had brought me to my youth.
and again, i felt as if i were being torn from myself.
and again, the waves of light crossed my sight.
and again, i was myself once more,
trying to deduce the
odd object i was given
by an old man
who looked, strangely enough, like me.