I woke up, in tiers. I kept my eyes shut to hold on to the torpor and savour the drowsiness, to bask in its softness as it slowly retreated, like the tide. I could hear my heart beat, only faintly at first, and then louder and louder until it was all that there was. Then I felt my lungs breathe, in with the rise and out with the fall. Progressively, their cadences synced and locked, beating my measure in counterpoint. I was awake.

But there was something else, something more: pressures, not quite tectonic, on a much smaller scale. I opened my eyes. It was dark. It was dense. It enveloped me, kept me warm and serene. I felt safe and swaddled and pressed. It insisted, in a way, in a sense, in a certain direction. It pushed. I stirred. It kept pushing. I felt myself moved and carried away. Till suddenly, like a cry, I broke a surface, and I was extruded. It was bright. I felt heavy, like a rock or a stone. I shivered. It was cold. I shut my eyes to keep out the brightness as I lay there, trembling in its claws, panting in its jaws.

I grew warmer. I felt my heart regain its composure, my lungs their original rhythm. I opened my eyes. Everything around me was green, everything above blue. I felt lighter. A warm breeze waved the green that surrounded me. There were little noises everywhere. It felt nice.

At some point, the brightness went away. The blue turned to black and the green to grey. I was cold again. But it did not last for very long. The brightness returned, and with it, the blue and the green. I felt warm once again. This cycle repeated itself rhythmically, flowing symmetrically from one to the other, like somebody breathing.

One day, a person came. She stared at me. She took a stick and prodded me, then hit me with it. She put it down and walked away. A little later, she returned, with someone else. He was larger than her. They both stared at me. They talked together. Then the person she had come with knelt beside me. He said, "Hello". He said they came from a village just beyond the horizon. He said he was the mayor of that village. He asked me what my name was. I said I didn't know. He asked me where I'd come from. I said I didn't know. He got up, and they stared at me a little more. Then the mayor said that they had to leave but that they would return. And the next day, they did. There were three of them. They stared at me. They said that I had grown, that I had expanded. They asked me why. I said I didn't know.

From then on, the villagers would come and see me every day. There were a great many of them. I couldn't always tell them apart. Some were bigger than others. Most of them were nice. They would come to watch me grow. They would tell me about the village and the world beyond it, what had happened before and what they thought would happen next. Some of them told me how they felt, who they hated or loved, and what they had had for dinner and lunch. I listened. I liked listening to them. And the more bloated they said I became, the lighter I felt.

One day, they came and found me hovering just above the ground. They stared at me. They talked among themselves. Then one of them left. He came back with wooden pegs and ropes. They hammered the pegs into the ground, threw the ropes over me and tied them to the pegs with knots. While the villagers were busy tying me down, the mayor arrived. He watched them work and nodded. He came closer and stood beside me. He said he had come to explain, to reassure me. He opened and closed his mouth twice, then smiled and said nothing. I didn't pry. It didn't feel right. So we just watched them work in silence.

After that, the villagers who came to see me would sometimes tie me down, often with ropes and sometimes with weights. When I became too big, too large for their ropes to fit over me, they brought chains. There were hooks on the ends of the chains. They left for the village and reappeared with slabs of rock. They attached the chains to the slabs and dug the hooks into my flesh.

But I kept growing and growing, becoming lighter and lighter. Until one morning, the hooks ripped from my flesh, and I floated gently out of reach. From there, I could see the village just over the horizon. I saw one of the villagers come out of one of the houses. He stopped and looked up in my direction. Another came out of the house next to the first one, and they stood together and pointed their fingers at me. They talked among themselves. Then they went to the other houses and knocked on all of the doors. Those that came out of the houses also stood and stared in my direction. Some pointed fingers. They did a lot of talking.

Then, the entire village came to see me. They all stood there and stared. They shielded their eyes from the sun with their hands as I soared higher and higher. They said nothing, not even the mayor. Some of them cried. One of them waved me goodbye. And we watched each other grow smaller and smaller until we could see each other no more.

I soon found myself surrounded by birds. Some of them were curious, others aggressive. They would peck at me. But most remained wary and avoided me. I moved on. After that, I found myself in the path of what the villagers called "planes". I was scared. They went by so fast. They made so much noise. I feared we might collide. But we didn't. I just sailed past until I was out of their path and past their corridor. I breathed a sigh of relief.

At last, I reached what the villagers called "the atmosphere", the boundaries of the Earth I had emerged from. But still, I did not stop. I floated on and on until, at some point, I found an orbit, a place that I no longer moved away from but an ellipse that carried me as I rotated around the Earth.

As I revolved, I crossed the path of the Moon I used to see from below when I lay on the ground near the village. It was so much prettier from up close. Each time we would meet, I would try talking to it. I would say "Hello", ask it how it felt and if it had a name. But it said nothing. I asked if it too had emerged from the Earth and floated up. It did not answer. It never did. But did it really understand my question? Could it hear me at all? Did it even know that I existed?

Nonetheless, with every mute reply, I grew fonder and fonder of it. Till one day, as I watched it drift slowly out of sight, past the horizon, I realised I was what the villagers called "in love". It made me bashful at first. I stopped trying to talk to it. But very soon, I could not bear to float silently past, my affection undeclared and my love unacknowledged. So, as it brushed past me and drifted on, just before it passed the horizon, I cried out, "I love you!" I hoped it would say something when we saw each other next. But it said nothing. I was crushed.

Regardless, my love now declared, I could not bring myself to lock it up again, so every time we met, I would proclaim it anew. Sometimes I would yell it, sometimes I would whisper it. But it would never say a word in return. Although, sometimes, I thought I saw it smile as we circled the Earth in what the villagers would call "a nuptial dance", never consumed.

Recently, I have realised that, although I am no longer becoming any lighter, I have not ceased to evolve. My volume now seems to be stable, but I am still becoming less dense. I am still spreading myself thin. And with every rotation, portions of me are dissolving and dispersing themselves into the ether. It is only a question of time until I fade completely away. I have not told the Moon. I do not want it to worry, for it to fear it will be alone, once more, when I am gone. I want us to enjoy the time that we have left. And I know that the last portion of me to go will be my final declaration of love to a thing that ignores me.