The water is my whole world until it isn’t. One moment I am drifting through cold currents, silver light trembling above like a second ocean. The next, the world tears. A hook pierces my mouth. It is not pain at first, but confusion so sharp it becomes its own kind of panic. The river pulls one way, the sky pulls another, and I am suddenly between worlds that no longer agree on what I am allowed to be. I fight. Of course I fight. Every instinct I have was written for motion, for escape, for becoming small enough to disappear into reeds and shadow. But the pull is patient. Strong. Certain. I break the surface. Air hits me like a verdict. There is light I was never meant to survive. Hands take me. Not cruel at first, just inevitable. The cold becomes heat becomes pressure becomes stillness. The world narrows until it is only edges: blade, board, the quiet rhythm of something that has done this a thousand times and will do it a thousand more. I try to remember the river. It is already fading. There is a moment where I am opened to the air, and everything I ever was spills into brightness that does not recognize me. I do not understand betrayal. I only understand that I am no longer moving. Then fire. The pan sings. My shape changes, not into something new I can understand, but into something finished. The water leaves me in whispers. The last of me curls into heat and sizzles away like a thought that cannot hold itself together. And in the final instant, I realize something vast and indifferent: The ocean never promised I would stay. Only that I could swim, until I couldn’t.
