Easy Breathing

When you said you were leaving, I froze. The words stuck in my throat until they choked me and it hurt. It really did. I can feel them now, suffocating in their intensity as they push down against me, dragging me deeper below the green water…

I open my eyes and look out at the world above. Light refracting in ripples along the surface and distorting a breathtaking landscape of greens and blues that bleed together. Swaying trees reach wanton fingers up to the sky and lift blankets of clouds, moved by persistent winds that race high along the mountains and lightly kiss their top branches. All matters of wings that fly above are screeching out in glory, for they have conquered the world.

I reach up and feel the pressure folding against me. My hand lightly brushing the perfect mirror of surface that warps what’s above and silences the noisy morning chatter of birds and other small creatures.

Soft like feathers the dawn breaks in full and the sun falls directly into my picture. A frame of vision that’s blurred at the edges by sparkling water, nearly perfect without the ripples caused by my movement—they’re always there no matter how still I attempt to be. The cresting sun warms the silent landscape around me, causing it to shimmer and shift as the light plays tricks. Golden rays diluted to a subtle green through the water, coloured by growing things far below.

At last, I pull myself forwards through cold water to breathe the much-coveted air into my starved lungs, exhaling with natural relief and satisfaction. The direct sun warms my uptilted face as I bask in the clarity of such a peaceful place.

My eyes drift closed as I notice my surroundings without vision complicating and overstimulating my awareness. Nature encompasses my surroundings, causing society to fade into memory as the breeze carries whispers of fresh pine and snow. The scent of something foreign moves with the animals, travellers, and wanderers who’re roaming the Earth from land to sky, plains to mountains. Slowly I re-open my eyes and bring a hand up to shield them, the sun is much too bright after emerging from the veiled depth of cool waters.

The orchestra swirling around me is finally clear and I listen intently: the odd cracking branch noting something big moving, the high-pitched chirping from way up above me, and the trickle of slow-moving water. Even the trees sigh today.

Through the smudged colours of water droplets caught in my eyelashes rainbows form around the sun until I blink them away, and at last, can see everything clearly. The mountains lead beyond a forest that circles the irregularly shaped lake. Shallow rivers branch off unseen, their presence known purely from the faraway rushing of quick-moving water. I look down at my bare feet which rest against smooth stones worn by time from the melting and formation of ice, a cycle that brings and takes as it shifts.

Aren’t they so much more colourful under the water?

I remember how I used to sit upon these stones for hours at a time, always taking and leaving with a different variety of rocks. I would dunk them into the water as soon as they dried, never wanting to keep them as the pale shadow of such vibrant colour.

I’ve never roamed this far down into the cool green-blue waters; my mother always said I’d get sick with hypothermia or worse. But I needed the clarity, the peace of being completely submerged in silence. I wanted to feel the weight of something pushing against me.

The air is so light and it leaves too much room to take breathing for granted, to waste my lungs on strangled gasps and cries. I like how easily the cold can empty my head. Breaking away from reality with water that stops my breath and dries my thoughts to colorlessness like the rocks, forgotten in rippling waves.

But then there’s that laugh, I hear it twinkling just like the water when I move my hands along the surface. The high sun glimmers on ripples slowly moving outwards just as your eyes would light with laughter or a smile. I can’t escape you. I can’t relieve myself of the words that play over and over relentlessly in my head. Tell me you love me.

I didn’t know how to stay, I couldn’t bring myself to utter back anything but the words: I’m sorry. Maybe it’s pride or selfishness because I know you’d have given it to me had I ever built up the courage to ask. You left first. So I drove away in the opposite direction, along twisted roads and then up rocky dirt paths.

There’s a sudden movement on the bank that breaks me from my reverie. I whirl around, startled at first, only to see a small doe grazing on the light beach grass. I must’ve turned too quickly because she raises her head and stares at me. I stare back. Both of us afraid to make a move: deer caught in headlights. I wanted to ask you to stay.

I sigh and drop my hands into the water once more, making her jump and run off back the way she came. Eventually, I can’t see her anymore and it’s like she was never there in the first place. The sounds around me resume to unhearing ears. The sighing of leaves, chirping of birds, and bubbling of quick-moving water over stones fill the quiet. Life continues but I remain, all of my feelings forever pushing against me with the weight of easy breathing.