{Written last year.}
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Life has effaced you. The wind and tide have swept you away.
Does it matter that you wanted them, waited for them? Watching you being carried away from me still feels like drowning.
Being in this place without you feels like trying to breathe water: Burning. Agonizing. Frustrating. There is oxygen in water; but I cannot use it.
I am not equipped for this kind of life.
When you were here the water never burned in my lungs. How did I never notice that you were breathing for me all this time?
And what if it is not only the water? Land or sea—wake or wave or footprint marking your departure—would I still be gasping? Still be drowning?
So perhaps drowning is worth us having left the shore—left light and air behind—to traverse murkier depths together: You are gone. I am drowning. That would be the same, land or sea.
But I would feel self-betrayed, self-forsaken, had I drowned in air rather than water.
This way I can tell myself that it is the medium, and not me.
I do not know your destination. I know what you want, what you wish, what you journey toward—but for the first time since we set out I cannot tell you if it will be the shape you desire upon your arrival.
I can only hope that that arrival will be welcome to you. That your own hopes do not betray you.
This is a path you were always walking.
You were always leaving, even at my side. The fact of your distance now leaves me in a atmosphere that was always alien. You have never pretended otherwise.
Your departure has always been waiting—like a another, stronger tide—to tug me away from you.
That breach is not disgrace.
Your disregard is not betrayal.
You were always already gone.
__________________________________
*Commotio cordis: concussion of the heart, caused by a blow to the chest over the region of the heart by a blunt object which does not penetrate the body.
____________________________________________________
Life has effaced you. The wind and tide have swept you away.
Does it matter that you wanted them, waited for them? Watching you being carried away from me still feels like drowning.
Being in this place without you feels like trying to breathe water: Burning. Agonizing. Frustrating. There is oxygen in water; but I cannot use it.
I am not equipped for this kind of life.
When you were here the water never burned in my lungs. How did I never notice that you were breathing for me all this time?
And what if it is not only the water? Land or sea—wake or wave or footprint marking your departure—would I still be gasping? Still be drowning?
So perhaps drowning is worth us having left the shore—left light and air behind—to traverse murkier depths together: You are gone. I am drowning. That would be the same, land or sea.
But I would feel self-betrayed, self-forsaken, had I drowned in air rather than water.
This way I can tell myself that it is the medium, and not me.
I do not know your destination. I know what you want, what you wish, what you journey toward—but for the first time since we set out I cannot tell you if it will be the shape you desire upon your arrival.
I can only hope that that arrival will be welcome to you. That your own hopes do not betray you.
This is a path you were always walking.
You were always leaving, even at my side. The fact of your distance now leaves me in a atmosphere that was always alien. You have never pretended otherwise.
Your departure has always been waiting—like a another, stronger tide—to tug me away from you.
That breach is not disgrace.
Your disregard is not betrayal.
You were always already gone.
__________________________________
*Commotio cordis: concussion of the heart, caused by a blow to the chest over the region of the heart by a blunt object which does not penetrate the body.
