What do I see?

A swimming pool jump board. A very, very long board that stretches out into the black black sea. The waves crash against the nothingness, black on black, fading into the void. It’s the chasm. It’s back -- but it’s taken form: the very, very real of black waters tiding, an oh-so-futile effort to climb back up against the cliff stones.

But no, they just stare.

The water splashes into hands, arms, grieving, reaching to pander up. Millions of hands, reaching out with ache, each bash against the stone as they leave their blood pooling into the crevasses. Of misunderstanding, of the deep craving to be understood, of a hopeless howl into the deep night… The white foam caught in the swirl like endless broken bones of tries. The sounds are too loud as they drown out my screams of despair, as deep that craving is is as deep the pike gets driven into my core.

Tide in, tide out. Hammer raise, hammer fall.

The gun’s gone off and I’m lapping through the race, round on round like a pinstripe rat. Oh the glory-filled stands, the streamers and chants, cheerleaders and parents, applause and frenzied audience. The lights above are a gold so artificially true they liken the sun. Hot, ablaze, staring down at us as we speed for our lives. The grass is greener on the other side, so I leap forward in mind-numbing glee. Hoots and claps from the stands. What goes around, comes around, so I sprint forward with all my might -- it will all be worth it, it will all be deserved, this will all pay off I tell myself. That’s what everyone says. The win is all I see. Some arbitrary red line that I’ve passed many times but yet the next, the last, the ultimatum is of course still many laps away.

But I can see it. As red as a ticking bomb. As red as my veins it thumps. As red as the eyes of people whom the sun is slowly cooking up.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, no pain no gain, so I push the iron taste to the back of my foaming mouth. The audience jumps up in crazed screams. Bobbing up and down like the nodding head of validation. Oh please. Pretty please! I beg of you. It’s lonely at the top, set your sights far, you were meant to be great, to do larger-than-life, history imprinting things. I’ll change the world if its the last thing I do before I die, then maybe, maybe only then, I can see my ashes blending with the wind, where we all go back to anyway.

But not yet. Now I’m alive. And so the wind only cuts across my face and leave trails of tears permanently flowing towards the sea. Cuts so deep they form wrinkles on these cheeks that time has squeezed.

My lungs, time is squeezing my lungs as I gasp for air. Drowning in the lights and glory and murderous applause. I finally see the end, that red line calling to me. As I turn the final bend, the crowd goes wild! Then time lets go, and the world turns perfectly still. A microcosm of the universe spinning on one axis. One slow, slow turn.

So slowly that one blink of an eye takes a lifetime. Where a thought can lurk forever.

I exasperatedly pull my leg through the molasses. Desperate attempts to move forward, one step at a time, to no avail. I’m moving so slowly I’m dying at the same time. This moment in gradual pull towards the finish line. When I look down I see black hands start to coalesce out of the sunburnt track, wrapping its tendrils around my legs and feet. Like glue, their coldness reminds me of frozen water. Yet it’s also soothing like ice on a burn. They are slowing me down.

Stop pulling me back! I yell.

Yet more they come, lethargically, poisonously, tenderly. Unraveling from the auburn ground like missionaries of death, unfurling fingers of love to tightly grip my ankles. The more I move towards the finish line, the further up they climb… Reaching my knees, working up my thighs and hugging me, anchoring me from the waist down, sinking like cement, this black murky oasis of salt and slime.

A flash and I can’t open my eyes.

Sluggishly I try to tug at my eyelids but my hands are strapped down. Testing, I realize my feet are too, in fact my whole body is immobilized. A crack of fluorescent white slithers through my eyes and I manage to see.

From the metalearning mirror hanging directly above me, I observe that I’m on an operating table undergoing surgery.

The numbness of anesthetic, the smell of sterile disinfectant, I come to the image reflected of myself with my front opened like Christmas wrapping. Skin cut apart and pulled back to reveal pumping red organs, each beating in its own time, writhing and bobbing, ebbing and flowing.

Tide in, tide out. Breath in, breath out.

My skin is stretched out and piked in the table to expose my working insides. I admire my inner being with wonderous detachment. None of it hurts, in fact there’s absolutely no feeling at all. Like jumping off a cliff into dark water, merely enveloped with clarity and cold.

Surrounding me is a rouleaux of doctors milling about - maybe surgeons, maybe scientists, I dunno. They are wearing their cute little turquoise caps and scrubs, some with clipboards and others manning the machinery with all my vitals inscribed in tiny beating lines. Red lines. The finish line.

“Interesting, THE SUBJECT is not showing response when electro-prodding the hip nerves. Technically, the legs should be moving by now? Do we have hormonal signs why IT’S not motivated?”

“Negative.” Someone calls from the machinery.

The two main clipboard holders study my organs intently, clearly dismissing my blinking eyes of wanting attention. They point their mechanical pens here and there, drawing out the results of how I’m supposed to have reacted. They continue:

“Have we upped the voltage?”

“To a threatening degree, Doctor.”

“Why don’t we try another dosage of self-awareness?”

“Or…” The womanly one decides, “Let’s go straight for the heart.”

No, no it’s not surgery. Surgeries are like the therapy I was told to seek, meant to fix problems -- but **I AM **the problem. This is merely an experiment. The subject am I.

I’m back on track but the crowding cheers have turned into noise. If you listen closely it might even merge into the roars of waves crashing against a cliff somewhere. I turn my head to see the audience around -- their faces have changed. Eyes burnt into their sockets from looking at the sun too long. skin melting off and merging together like volcanic lava, mortally flowing from the stands.

And the track has morphed. From separate red runs into one long board, almost like one of those tall swimming pool diving boards. With me on one end, painfully sprinting in time and a cliff on the other, end outreached far above the sea.

The iron taste in my mouth mingles with the salty breeze, and every breath rakes fresh red lines across my lungs. But I cannot stop.

I source my life juice -- or is it the dose of self-awareness? -- into bolting towards the end. Having fought against the grabbing black hands, I rip the love to shreds and my skin comes off with them. I hear echoes of care mixed with concern thumping in my ears stronger than heartbeats as I pound towards the other side. What pulls me back is what also is keeping me from plunging into the darkness, when I finally face myself. The hands don’t register they are clapping to the same chant of death that the crowds egg on, for they act in raw: the purest form of love that helplessness can embody. They have the same color as my darkest fear and oh, there is so much pain, but I know ironically, they are the only things that can ground me down.

Tough love, this is.

Closer and closer I reach the waves of blackness crashing against the chasm. Tide in, tide out.

The moment finally comes and I’m near the edge. In a crystal-clear moment of black and white, I slice through the air and fling my body over the edge of the long jump board -- arms and legs askew.

For a moment, I’m frozen in midair. That perfect moment of clarity when the world seizes time, and the universe stops spinning, the axis tips and is the iridescent free fall of realization.

Love and hate have always been on the same side of the coin. Or two ends of the same board, will you: delicately balancing like one of those wooden dragonfly toys on the precipice of an understanding mind.

They are made of the same black matter. Some strong concoction of parent and child, of their lives and ours, of past and potential, of regret and hope. It’s as mystifying as it is intoxicating. Those hands: that snuff and save. The purposeful clapping mixes itself with the crashing waves of despair. To drag down and help up.

And with that, I start to fall. Everything speeds up and closes in. All of a sudden the noises and screams of disappointment shriek from every wave, getting louder and louder as the world tumbles, tipping the jump board into a spinning chaos. I can’t differentiate the voices, like you can’t pin a face in a crowd. But they come at me. Like that thought which lurked in the shadows since a sunny childhood day, or rapidly blinking tears as hot as iron itself -- etched into the crevasses of the cliffs sneeringly approaching. I could taste the salt, and blood, splatter like droplets on my face.

Finally, oh finally, finally.

My soul shatters into a million pieces like glass. A menagerie finally broken and set free. Floating ontop the black black waters, they shimmer occasionally -- like the fish scales of death.

Achingly, the pieces slowly rise up from the water and ascent towards the sky. The glittering mist touches even the toughest of hearts, an evaporation of tears. An aurora accompanies the silent symphony of glimmering shards as they spiral and circle into the inky fabric of night.

My body is left to pray for the hurt I’ve caused and pain and imperfection. In those waters of dark dark thoughts, I’m swallowed with regret, and guilt and bear the scars I’ve lashed. Each tide washes in and out and I’m just left helpless to their whims. What gives me consolation is that when not broken by despair, when I can still lift my neck ever so slightly against the bending curse of life, I see myself reflected in the stars.

Like a mirror of fate, like that image from the experimental table, I behold my soul pieces sewn into the scintillating blackness. This is me truly sliced open, and piked into the twinkling eyes of destiny.

Black water, night sky. Clapping hands, arms of glue. Shimmering scales, glittering stars. One end of the jump board and the other in the stadium. Love and hate. Despair and hope. Spinning on that singular axis of perspective is understanding chasing its own tail, around and around.

Tide in, tide out.

Do you know how heavy it is to carry a soul within? An intelligent, feeling being trapped within the carcass of expectation, in the chains that society and desire have imprisoned you in. What are we each but mirrors to our own selves? We chase immortality with murder. Reflecting, entangling, and tearing at each other like shattered pieces of the same horcrux.