There was once a young man, who knew on the same day

both Joy and Sorrow.

They came down in waves upon him, and stripped him of warmth, smothering layer

upon

layer

in a python-constricting womb,

till his lungs were forced out of all air, and his screams became nothing more than silent bubbles, empty words that disappear above the line

separating sea and sky.

His fingers were pruned with the effort of escape; the seemingly tangible

Memories, Hopes, Dreams

slipping out of the hole-ridden container which he had shaped with his two hands.

His legs, chained to the ocean, had desperately searched for shore, stepped on land-ho, only for it to liquefy under him, plunging him further away from the light,

into the Tunnel of Darkness.

He remembered on that day learning just one lesson:

struggling only made the drowning worse.

And so:

he let the water embrace him, hug him like a long lost lover

he let Neptune close the lid of his coffin; sky blue, ocean blue, blue

he let the sirens and fishes weep; the salt of their tears made no difference

and

He let the world sink

under

over

A broken ship

A swallowed land

A message in a bottle,

warning its reader

that love had looked like the sea,

but regret was how it tasted.

150 days it lasted, and 220 days it ended.

When the animals had returned to land,

when Spring flourished above the bodies of the drowned and the wicked, he stumbled

fish out of water

trepidatious onto land

that felt like thin ice

His clothes, now dry and stiff, had made him feel their watery weight as they pulled him down six feet under, twenty thousand leagues under. The air, which he so wanted before, had no more use to him. He no longer wanted to speak. He no longer wanted to breathe. In fact it burned him with this gift of life,

undeserved.

It didn’t take very long for him to realise that the sky was just a mirror of the same prison.

Since that day,

the sea never left him.

The sea had become a part of him.

Three-quarters worth.

The blood in his veins.

The salt in his tears.

The taste of his tongue.

The blue in his eyes.

His body only a vessel

neither half-empty

nor half-full

carrying fragments, shells of a long ago lifetime

thrown down by the sea.

He should have been a hero, coming back from the dead,

but to be honest he never managed to end his quest. Over the years as he travelled from land to land, he doubted if the things that haunted him had truly happened.

He only needed to turn around, to see if his nightmare had been real.

But no.

The words would anchor themselves into his ears again

like siren song, luring him away.

Don’t look back.

Don’t

look back.