"WATER" BY JAY GREENBERG

My body collides with the water, shattering the surface and sending out hundreds of little ripples and disturbances, turning the once-perfect mirror into a warped unrecognizable version of the world. The impact burns, a thousand tiny needles piercing my skin, but any feeling I have now will be surrendered within a matter of seconds to the water that has now surrounded me completely. As soon as the water closes over my head, I can feel the day's stress being drained out of me, leaving me with a feeling of cleanliness that is unattainable anywhere but here. The water is cold. The shock of the icy liquid lifts the confused foggy trance that's been clouding my vision all week. It numbs my hands and my feet, but I barely notice. I plunge deeper into the infinity below me, Enjoying the solitude. Making it last, because I love to be here more than anywhere else. I love how time seems to stop. How the sounds of the world are dulled to almost nothing by the murky, white noise and the ringing in my ears. I love looking up at the light coming down in perfect rays through the warped glass surface, and looking down at the endless cloudy water. I love being washed of my words, my actions, my crimes. I love the feeling. Peaceful and somehow almost threatening. I am completely immersed in it. The feeling itself is enough to swim in. enough to drown in.

And I love the fleeting moment of uncertainty as I let myself go an inch too deep, stay under a second too long. My last breath escapes me, but even as I feel my chest burn and my heart pounding just behind my eyes, I hesitate, Holding onto the fear and exhilaration of not knowing. ‘What happens if this time, i don't make it to the surface.’ I feel my lungs burning, begging silently for air but I can meet their pleas with only water. It fills my throat and eyes. Suffocating me. My limbs flail aimlessly around me, grasping for something that I can't touch. The knowledge that if this time, I break the surface again, choking on the air that's entering my lungs too quickly, too desperately, I will be clean. Humbled by the reminder that death isn't far away at all. if you reach out your hand, you can touch it.