Deep Sea Diver

I am here in four walls at the expense of the ocean, my cage becoming my freedom; because if I were dead and mangled, I would never be able to see anything the ocean could ever offer. Even if in my little eye and little body, I could never see it all, I'd rather take anything than nothing. Everything is a life sentence that takes away from something.

As a diver you'll never reach the depths of human experience; but you hope that in death you'll sink to bottom, someday. To walk amongst men is typical, to be in the sun is to be warm and seen, but that's not where I'm meant to be. Even amongst men and their clawing eyes I never really rested understood. I have begotten understanding and hoping from shoulders, but I have sunk in deeper into dark unknowns with the fish. Together but alone, away from the sun and held in night and its dark is the quiet rest of an exploration that is feels more like rediscovery. I have lived with the unseen depths of my soul, and that seems like being seen; being known. I have found solace in the unseen. I was unseen too.

And thus is the power of admittance, of violent resignation. That I may melt unknown and be home in the unseen waters I may never see again, is the pleasure I have gotten from these depths. Every inch I will never rediscover, but that I did for a moment, makes my expanse more expansive. I grow changed and I forsake it, I forget and feel the same: but I will always be changed. That the inevitable is inevitable, is a causation that makes me feel its certainty, that makes me comfortable and predictable. The chaos of the depths creates an order when it takes in my own unbridled chaos. It's how I make sense of it, seeing it outside myself, expressed by nature, seeing that I am not so different myself. In the unknowns I am made, in a funny way it will always be the same.

The cage rattles.

Every time I sink deeper the water gets heavier and it's harder to move. Confronted with depths the heart tends to contrict a little, but it just makes it beat a little harder, signifying defiance: aliveness in death. In the darkness the light shines a little harder and matters that much more, if only you're comfortable with snuffing it out from time to time. To ignore these unknowns is to ignore the worlds.

I'm always with you. Even if we're worlds apart, Sarah.

But I digress, I'm a little scared. Was that another big fish or a failure of machinery? I don't know which one to fear more, to be torn at the mercy of another living being trying to survive, pushed to the extremes of hunger, to violence, or my own deft and bludgeoning hands, controlled by a brain that wants to know and feel safe. And we both resort to violence, and we both resort to peace. To fake confidence is necessary sometimes, if not a little tone-deaf and brutish. The fish and I are trying to survive in our queer ways, and for that fact, I turn to my forgiveness. My heart swells, and it beats a little harder.

Sarah...

Ah, this seems like a good height. How in times of hatred and fear, we think about love... Today I will be looking at the fish and bringing the ideas to the surface, letting their existence be known. It always seemed strange to me, is to be known always better than obscurity? Does the unfamiliar always want to be familiar or is she comfortable? Content with being alone? Maybe next time I'll teach the fish to speak so she could tell me. But it was always strange to me, to let the existence of something be known to someone who would never wanted to know. They don't care, how could it ever feel like care? It feels like violence.

I wish I could be in these depths forever.


I open the door.