From the dark purple of the deep, you slowly tilt your head towards the surface. Rays of light sparkle through the sea of marijuana green, you close your eyes to hear the beam splash through the water.
Solitude: the painful pleasure of silent contemplation takes hold of you; is it the warmth you feel, the glow of anticipation, or is it the far-away sun? Your cold fingers linger on your arm; you stretch your hands in the water and try to hold the glow in your palms.
You swim toward the light, flapping your tailfin, arcing through the green. Thoughts of him haunt your mind. His fading smile, shattering glass, broken promises. You swivel, let yourself drown, close your eyes.
Away from the sun, the world, the sky. Away from life. You are lost to the world above, you do not exist. You are a mere speck in the deep end of the ocean.
Will he come in search of you? Do you want to be found? Do you want to breathe again? You hold your breath, it doesn’t matter anymore.
You glide for a while, force yourself to smile, but it drifts away as though it never had been. He destroyed you. Maybe you shouldn’t have fallen; you should have hidden amongst the weeds and stayed away from the world.
You think of the day you emerged from the cold blue sea of green, when you breathed. You remember the day you stood by clusters of bog cotton, sunlight filtering through white fluffy clouds, highland winds swirling around you. You felt alive. You cannot feel the joy of beauty anymore. He took everything you had, only the strange gratification of grief remains.
He chose her. You have no reason to breathe. Your heart sinks into itself. The ocean is not as deep as your heart, that chasm.
You spent all your energy in loving him, you have nothing left. You have no strength to hate him. Pain shall take its course. You submitted yourself to the vagaries of love and it’s too late to fight the flow.
Swaying slowly, in a curl, you cease to think.
Writer: Sindhu Rajasekaran
Illustrator: Laura Dixon
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