Of Water

I began this life in water.

In the safe, quiet oblivion of a womb.

Before words, before gravity, before heartbreak,

there was only the hush of liquid,

a slow, pulsing lullaby

beneath my mother’s ribs.

It was a silence I didn’t fear—

not absence,

but immersion.

The first warmth.

The first weightlessness.

The first knowing.

Even now, I think I remember it.

Not clearly,

not as memory,

but as mood.

When the rain falls just right—

soft, steady, unhurried—

my skin seems to echo

that ancient shelter.

That original stillness.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to water.

At four, I learned to swim.

Or rather, I learned to surrender.

I remember my father’s hand on my back,

light as a thought,

his voice saying,

“Let go. The water will hold you.”

I didn’t believe him.

Not at first.

I kicked, I flailed.

I coughed on lake water and fear.

But eventually,

I stopped fighting.

And there it was—

buoyancy.

A miracle I hadn’t earned.

A trust I hadn’t given.

The water caught me anyway.

At eleven, I stood beside the ocean for the first time.

It wasn’t gentle.

It roared.

The waves came in fists,

and still, I loved it.

Because it felt like truth.

Like a voice too big for words.

Like grief and wonder woven together.

Like God.

I didn’t swim that day.

I just stood on the sand,

letting the surf touch my toes,

and I understood that

some things don’t need to be understood.

Only witnessed.

Water teaches that.

Not everything needs explanation.

Some things just are.

Rain doesn’t ask permission.

It falls.

Rivers don’t argue with rocks.

They curve around them.

Tears don’t wait for logic.

They rise.

At nineteen, I cried in the shower

for someone who never loved me back.

I let the hot water mask my sobs,

the same way I let their texts

mask their absence.

I didn’t want to be held.

I wanted to disappear.

To dissolve.

To become steam

and leave myself behind.

But instead,

I learned that grief has its own flow.

You don’t stop it.

You survive it.

You float through it

until it lets you breathe again.

I began writing poems around then.

Little floods of feeling

too messy for conversation.

Water was always in them.

A cracked glass,

a bath gone cold,

a river without a name.

I think part of me believed

that if I could write water,

I could write peace.

I’m still trying.

At twenty-eight, I stood in the rain without an umbrella

because I needed to feel something real.

The sky wept with me.

Not in sympathy—

but in synchronicity.

There’s comfort in being part of a pattern

older than sorrow.

Older than hope.

I tilted my head back

and let the droplets find my face.

Each one a soft, anonymous forgiveness.

We are, all of us,

made mostly of water.

It moves through us,

reminding us we’re temporary.

We sweat, we cry,

we bleed, we thirst.

Our bodies are tidal.

So are our hearts.

We empty.

We refill.

I’ve been to lakes that don’t end.

Rivers that forget where they started.

Pools that reflect more than mirrors.

I’ve washed my hands in holy water

and cursed myself in rainstorms.

I’ve poured water over my head

on days when the world felt too loud.

It always helps.

Not because it solves anything.

But because it reminds me

I’m not separate from it all.

I’m not against life.

I’m inside it.

At thirty-five, I baptized myself

in a stream behind a chapel

with no roof and no priest.

Only trees,

and birds,

and silence.

I walked in waist-deep

and whispered the names of my regrets.

One for every step.

I dunked my head

and came up gasping—

not for air,

but for grace.

The current didn’t answer.

It just kept flowing.

And that was enough.

Water doesn’t preach.

It doesn't fix.

But it changes.

Stone by stone.

Tear by tear.

Day by day.

Now, I live near the river.

lt murmurs all night long outside my window.

Sometimes, I think it’s talking to me.

Telling me to slow down.

Telling me to soften.

I leave the window open most nights.

Let the sound seep in

like a lullaby from before I was born.

And I dream of water.

In my dreams, I float.

Not swim.

Not sink.

Just float.

Weightless.

Wordless.Held.

I began this life in water.

And one day, I’ll return to it.

Ashes may rise.

Bones may rest.

But some part of me—

the soft part—

will dissolve

and join the flow again.

Maybe in a raincloud.

Maybe in a river.

Maybe in the tears of someone

learning to let go.

So let it rain.

Let it flood.

Let it baptize.

Let it remember me.

Of water I was made.

To water, I belong.