born of water: to drown

When the world began to waver all that time ago, it felt as if we were all cast into the open sea, the slender silver strings that tenderly wrapped around our spirits and connected to the hearts of our relations were severed when jagged waves came carving through. The relentless barrage, crests like mountains and troughs like valleys, would see our relations forever claimed to the sea—heads bobbing just at the other side of an infinity of salt and brine, dancing like specks of stars in the evening sky. And so we went on like this. Wrapping and wounding the remains of the silver strings as tightly as we could around our palms, fruitlessly pulling ourselves over sweeping waves beneath the steady burning of the sun, closer to whatever relations we had left, floating on momentary patches of a calm sea ceiling with the shimmering hope that the gentle hands of sea giants would reach out and cradle us and deliver us back to shore in the night, only to wake up and find that our relations had drifted farther away. And so we went on like this without even the thought of shore in sight, ebbing and flowing with the tide.

As the world fought to stay afloat, connected by whatever tethers remained, I felt the weight of severance pushing me below the surface until my spirit was submerged, surrounded on all sides by damp sun rays that reached like outstretched arms into my new fortress. I began to sink, further and further down, and the lives of the earth still tossing above began to converge and disappear into specks that I could glimpse at through my fingertips. The light of the burning sun was growing thinner as I descended. I found myself newly embraced by an empty, cavernous darkness, enveloped by the low feeling of a monstrous pair of eyes just beyond my sight, watching me slowly plummet further below. In this darkness, there was nothing but my spirit. My voice called out towards empty ears. I began to plead, to scream and thrash for anybody to cast their silver strings around my waist and pull me closer into a warm embrace, but the biting loneliness only grew colder and colder around my wrists.

Resigned, I closed my eyes and for the first time felt the water flowing up and around and past my body as I descended. The sensation of sinking had left me, then replaced by the gentle feeling of falling through the air, of wind slow dancing and caressing my spirit, pushing back the darkness and filling it with little beads of solace. The wind felt warm upon my skin, flying into my spirit and carefully spiraling smaller and smaller until it became a burning point at the center of my heart. In opening my eyes I realized my surroundings were just as dark as if my eyes remained shut, the boundary of the two worlds blending into each other until there was no difference at all, wind or water. And so the feeling of falling remained. Within the darkness I fell further and further into my self, trying to push closer and closer to that pinpoint of warmth that flickered and flared with the beating of my heart. Endlessly falling into my self, this was all that I wanted, the further I fell the more it lightened my eyes, warmed my spirit. With sweeping hands I pushed my surroundings into the darkness and descended closer to my self until I became the only thing I knew. I grew indifferent to the lives of those people on the surface far above, with their growth and change and wars and love, it was all too much. The thought of returning to the chaos of those crashing sea waves only pushed me further into the comfort of my self. I left it all above. The silence and isolation of the depths became arms that wrapped me in a peaceful cloak of content, of stillness, hand-in-hand with the gentle rocking of the loneliness guiding me to warmer places. My sense of self as a pebble on the beaches of the larger world, disintegrated around me. My arms and legs snapped away from my body and I left them suspended in the darkness as I sank farther below. Gone was my head, taking with it the self that existed within my mind. All that remained: my spirit in an eternal chase towards the warmth at my heart. Here I remain, endlessly falling away.

I see now there is something approaching from below me, or perhaps I am approaching something. Millions of motes of light seem to be escaping and illuminating a great gash in the sea floor, all floating around me like traces of dandelions after a fierce wind. I have reached the bottom. I swim towards the floor and stand with one leg on either side of the gash. As I reach down to place my palms onto the gash, it tears open further and reveals a colossal eye. The eye darts around in panic, gazing past me towards the surface. With a blink, a spotlight emerges from the pupils and shoots straight upwards, piercing through the darkness in an instant. I look up and I can see the people on the surface. They all float calmly, no longer separated. They are hand in hand with one another, lying on the backs of waves beneath the burning hands of the sun. I see now, the white beaches of land has returned and is pulling them all back to safety, to normalcy, the sleeping bodies peacefully drifting home. I feel my arms and legs snap back into place, my head returns followed by my thoughts and worries with it. The warmth in my heart begins to fizzle, replaced instead by a beating that thrums and batters with fear. Are they going to leave me down here? Are they going to leave me in the darkness of the sea? Will I never make it back to land? I look down at my palms and place them onto my neck. The coldness of the water is making me shiver, is biting at my ears. I am going to be forgotten. As I begin to swim upwards, the weight of doubt grabs me by the ankles and casts me back down to the floor. It was so warm down here, I can stay here forever if I find that warmth again. If I can find that peace again. But as I look up, the loneliness sets in once more, stabbing holes into my lungs and filling them with salt and ice. I am not at peace. But those people, in my falling they have changed. They have lived lives upon the bobbing of the ocean waves while I have only fallen. Have I grown? Have I changed? If I return, will they see me? Will they even know me? The people are drifting closer and closer to the beaches. Before I can make a decision, the great eye blinks once more and a powerful stream shoots me upwards. I am rushing towards the surface, pushing past the water and darkness that grates and shreds my skin. I am getting closer and closer to the surface, and the light of the sun is beginning to pierce my eyes. I break the surface and I am thrown onto the white beach where my landing calls the attention of the world. Everybody is staring at me. Looking through me and past me and around me. They are disgusted by me. The sun is burning the back of my neck. I collapse onto my hands and knees and feel the hot sand cutting into me. It is suffocating, the gaze of the people,

as if I am drowning.