Underwater

To be an inspiration to susceptible, guardless readers, listeners, watchers, thinkers, walkers, eaters, lovers, drinkers, breathers. Draw a note from your endless suitcase of sad tunes, tie it with a bow to your fragile wrist and walk proudly around, parade your own making. Just like these words, they will burn, imprint the meaning each different to those who take the time to read. It is a hat trick, a maze in its own right, a desolate road to recovery or a glorious path to freedom. Born out of a simmering desire to want the want. This is how I come to be inspired, how I am touched by what you had written. Simple, confined to the musical restraints, almost silent, heartbreakingly still. You push my whole body under water then slowly allow me to surface, float weightlessly in your sorrow, wallow in my own self pity, hurry towards the elating end that lifts my spirit momentarily.

Useless to think that any effort on your part could save me. There are only waves that bring me closer, calm me, stir the vessels that channel elusive, futile beginnings of thoughts sprawling on the page. Quickly lose coherence and I am back to drifting to your humming, endlessly roaming, being carried to invisible safety by these tireless words, these over used melodies. With each repeat you gain confidence and I am forced to revert back to where you found me. Where I found you. Over time it becomes easier to breathe, seduced to attempt to fill my lungs with air underwater. With each attempt I come closer to understanding the fate, the essence of existence that is defined by an unending need to create. Without it there is nothing, nothing above water. With it there is only a constant pull, only seldom liberated from the force which beckons deep down below. Never reaching dry land, only staying afloat: this is the most that can be said, can be done, can be wanted, wished for, prayed. And even like this, even with this threat of a painful end, the prospect of constant captivity, the creation like an iron chain, a heavy anchor pulling at the soul, even with this burden the gift of a word, a melody, a rhyme is far greater than any threat or pull or pain that could befall. I let go, fall after you and sink underwater.

I live my life with countless regrets. Each day brings a new one. I have lost the will to name them, keep them at bay, try to revoke them. Then comes a light, a wave, a feeling when I know that it is time to write. For that moment, for the duration that writing lasts, that inspiration holds on, that the fresh air forgets to change in my lungs, all regrets are overturned. Never mind what happens afterwards, how great the fall is, how the regrets magnify and the faults multiply, for this short time I am afloat. Right now, lying on a raft, sailing, wishing for shoreless seas. While these words last, while you read them, while I listen, there is stillness and air underwater. There are no regrets or wants for a different life.

You have moved me, fed me, kept me breathless. You have changed me, bettered me. There is but one thing I can do. I let go, fall after you and sink underwater.