We go to the atrium of the sun.  Some of us more than others, a day, a week, or every hour, depends on how much of a hold on us it has.  At times when we near it, we can feel the pulse of it as it beckons, and the closer you get, the closer to the current, the harder it is to pull away.  Today I do not wish to pull away, and I let it sweep me up and into the atrium.  Light, music, colors of gold draw me in farther; drawn in by the light gauzy air they create.  All the types of people in the world are there, dotting the colonnades and bookshelves or perched by tables, like little seeds settled by the wind.  There is a pool of the deepest turquoise and I can feel its coolness as I approach, and eagerly I nestle by the edge, peering into the shallow waters.  The sunlight cracks diamonds on the surface and I have to squint past the fractured light.  But then there is a little glimmer of gold, winking at me from the bottom, partially covered in sand, and my heart races.  Quickly before someone unwittingly sweeps it away from me with the currents, I thrust my arm in up to elbow and extract it from the waters.  The water traces down my arms, cool and teasing to my warm, cracked skin as I hold the object to the light.  It’s like a thin book, the pages slick and sliding through my fingers, as the water tries to keep its shape.  Golden streams slither across the surface as I brush the clumped sand from its shape, drawing it to me and opening the pages.  Leaping from the pages are words and images, dancing my life before my eyes, dazzling me with the myriad shapes and colors, making me spin with their meanings.  The lacey days of my childhood hover, quickly replaced by the blood stained pages of adolescence, and I pick a time that I wish to see and live it over again.  I am entranced and feel myself start to slip back into these images, start to mold into it and feel the water draining into my lungs.  Quickly I pull myself from the past and thrust the book back into the waters, fighting the tugging in my mind, a pulsing siren’s call.  Around me I notice men and women so absorbed in their pages that they are never able to pull themselves out again, drowning within themselves, and fear trebles in my body, shaking my veins as branches in a hurricane.  I run out of the atrium, back to reality, and leave the vibrations of the siren behind, yet they still quiver within me…whispers of an echo.