Sink
As you begin to walk the world around you shifts and spins. It seems to be transforming like a shape shifter or something inscrutable and unseen to the human eye. The walls of society, its rules and its pain all seem to be slowly fading away into the dark background of the chilled night. It crawls up your arms and grabs at your skin, making bumps rise on every inch of your body. You now begin to feel the ground beneath your bare feet sink, ever so slightly, into the sand. It’s warm with a sense of comfort to it, like a home perfectly toasted by the fireplace in the wintertime. As though if tiny ant sized pebbles are squirming and crawling between your toes. The anticipation builds up deep inside your chest and fills you with just enough excitement to be able to perfectly imagine yourself beginning a slow but steady jog. You can imagine your feet smacking the sand like pavement.
You then speed up into a sprint down the beautiful white fluffy beach, which seems to go on forever. The sand kicks up behind you like it’s trying to reach the stars. They are shining as bright as a Fourth of July firework show. Suddenly, you feel a rush of the salty crisp water. It’s as cold as winter after a blizzard when you wake and the world is covered in white and the trees are frozen, and the ground crunches beneath you as you walk.
Now standing ankle deep in the water you breathe in the fantastic smell of the ocean like a drug. You inhale through your mouth and back out your nose. Your frozen hands reach as high as you can above your head, giving you the feeling that you could just almost touch the sky. They are shaking, as would an old woman’s hands. You can imagine yourself almost free, but not quite yet. You breathe in again; realizing now that the air around you so still and brightly lit by the night stars, has gained a new feeling. A feeling deep within that has always been there, silent and unnoticed by anyone but you now.
It’s a feeling of nothingness, just blank. It’s a feeling that is colder and more numbing than the water that surrounds you. It covers you like a heavy wool blanket, pulling you down with all that it has. As you wade further into the water, waist deep now, you realize that it’s not all in your imagination anymore. Everything is real, the run down the beach, the sweet air filling your body, and the numbness of the frozen ocean around you. Even the dark unknown feeling was real and true. But you know now that the feeling is alive inside of you, it’s not out in nature, but it’s within you, its the honest feeling of being forgotten and forgetting.
You gasp and inhale sharply, holding your breath for the last seconds that seem to stretch into hours. You fall fast, down and down. You lay in the both comforting and peaceful ocean. It reminds you of an over-protective grandmother, opening her arms to show support and love. For the last time you ever so softly draw a breath, just how you would imagine a newborn baby’s breath to be like. This time, however, you let the water flood in through your mouth, just like the fresh salty air, and let it fill your lungs all the way to the top.