What is life if not the treading of water. Tides swell and rise and eventually pass. The occasional storm pulls at our feet and drags us down into nothingness. All we know how to do is inhale, exhale, and kick to stay afloat. Ships pass by in the night, their cold steel leaving trails of bubbling respite in waves that take seem to carry us, only if for a moment. We cling to our mothers with pruned fingers only to be separated by whirlpools that in hindsight are only ripples. Our fathers shield our eyes from the darkness beneath our toes. As adults with our own kin to protect we realize they were doing it for their own sake, for their own sanity.

We are pushed out into this world, this vast ocean, with the only promise and truth being that we all shall someday drown. There are tales of distant shores; beaches that are described with such detail that their sands almost seem within reach. Enraptured by the lore we peddle furiously, blindly into any direction, foolishly assuming we’ve the winds at our back. The North Star was just a nightlight and we still can’t tell the sea from the sky.

Brothers battle for shelter, elbowing each other outward until they are both too far to ever return. Again, we swim blindly, urgently across the globe in the desperation of return only to pass one another without recognizing. Old friends, family, lovers- all warped by the anonymity of times passing. Instead in their eyes we see only ourselves; cold, shivering, sinking.

We take solace in the feigned buoyancy of souls that aren’t there, treading in an endless stream of water as we die of dehydration. Our lips, cracking like all the great paintings that ever were and ever will be, tear at the seams in the hopes of forming one last smile. Our eyes are grey where once was hope as we look out on to a horizon that ends behind us. And finally, we sink.

Like weights at the ends of fishing lines we waver and wade as the curiosity of others intrudes our peripheries. Closer they swim to see just how dead we are. As the blackness swallows you, only then do you consider that maybe life above wasn’t as pointless as it may have seemed. Memories flicker like lightning bugs as the very last of your air burns in the center of your chest. Your eyes struggle to muster some color in a fit of asphyxiation and revitalization. Frantically you kick towards the surface with a weight that grows heavier with every thrust.

With an arm reached out towards the fading moon you think back on the warmth of sun, the colors of the sky at dusk-the way the clouds would dance before turning over the floor to the stars, the calmness of the sea after a great storm, your mother-who welcomed you to this world, your father-whose every moment was spent to protect what was his, your siblings-whose faces you now felt guilty to not recollect.

You finally understand. The confusion that once was had now vanished. Life above the water will be so simple now, you think. And yet, you sink nonetheless. There is no hand to pull you up. You spent your life in a bubble of your own concern, consumed by your own grievances, never extending yourself to any of the passerby’s you encountered on your selfish journey, many of which gestured to you for help. You’ve made a career of isolation and now your tears mix with the water that fills you and they cannot be seen. Your wails can not be heard. A life spent in the thought that you had given you heart to the world as collateral. Rains patter at the ceiling above you as your blue body goes numb in submission. As your brain suffers its final pangs of oxygen deprivation, your last could be how you wished that you had spent your life doing anything else at all, that you had been kinder, more considerate. Instead, you only pray that the next time around you are born with gills.