We Are Drowning, How Should We Kill Our Time?

21

 Toes in a velvet lake off the edge of a dock at night stars above so clear your eyes adjust the longer you're out here until it's purple-blue out here now, not black, while we pitch a tent and lie on the rough backing of grey tarp and rain drops and leaves fall onto the stretched fabric above us like small patters on drums while we laugh muffled into the night and sunset and sunrise our toes are in the lake off the edge of the dock there is nowhere I would rather be than beside the lake water lapping I land here into the natural rhythm of my own heartbeat all around me I am meant to be beside water, I know it, I wave my fingertips through the dark green of warm waves and stroke the lily pads and fish flutter around my palms; my sister weaves blades of reeds together and we forget what time it is, there is no such thing, a "now" extending and extending we cook marshmallows beside a little camp stove and blow the blisters of fire out and we sleep with toes tangled as it gets colder, your toes are my roots; and the stars blink above us and the leaves fall and there is a rhythm out here like my own heartbeat I never want to tear myself away from; it's sunrise and a heron flies overhead amongst the mist of the orange-purple horizon and I don't want to go back when my old life bores me, it bores me, it bores me. Its remnants bore me I cannot look at my computer only my phone to write, maybe, when I used to experience my life from the edge of a screen. It's evening again and we take the paddle boat out and we're standing, standing like we're flying into the horizon, like we're one with the water, in it's greens and purples and blues as it reflects all that's around it and inside of it, the shallow end has fish and weeds and we see turtles burrowing in the sand below us looking out the edge of the board into my best mirror, I see my clearest reflection here in my lake's blue-greens, and the shallow end gives way to the deep end and the weeds stop and the water is black and we shake in uncertainty but we know if we stand sturdier and more sure of ourselves we will make it all the way, flying into the horizon, to the island that's a bird sanctuary where we stop at its edge and watch the little patch of paradise people are not allowed to step onto where birds build their nests and weeds grow untamed and a chirping circles the air where ducks are bathing, turtles are bathing, in the sun that beats down on all of us but only some of us ever glance up at; I glance up and down and there is a world in the sky and a world in the water and a world between us because if I have you, sister, I don't need much of anything else, not even to capture these minutes through my fingertips all of these words and stories they are slipping away from me and I want to keep them (I can't keep them) I want to inscribe them into permanence but there is no permanence so at least I want to be known but I don't know why I want to be known when the spotlight does not shine on you for long, and I'm not sure it's the right light - this feels like the right light, when I feel the spotlights turned outwards, when I feel myself at the edge of erasure, in all of these moments they'll never hear about and the world won't remember but they meant everything to me.