Nightswimming…
Somewhere a hidden moon lies in wait, promising to shield the entire sun come next spring. On this night, only a soft chorus of insects and amphibians offers the slightest accompaniment, while in my head this song sounds – piano notes falling like water, dripping with heartache and longing.
The best music makes you so happy that you cry, tears of joy that the body releases while wondering what it’s doing. It is that wonder that unlocks a little bit of the universe, a part that it keeps closed to all but the most sensitive – the small recompense for feeling things a little too keenly, because I’m not sure we’re meant to feel things like that.
…I forgot my shirt at the water’s edge
The moon is low tonight…
Summer ended a while ago. Time moves differently now, time now is numbness. Time is staring blankly into space, unable to focus on anything, as much a deterioration of the eyes as a depletion of any drive or desire to see at all. Darkness and murkiness offer solace beneath the water, and I want so badly for it to be some sort of healing balm that I take their invitation to dive down deeper. Sadness and shadow imbuing everything now, and everything later.
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
I’m not sure all these people understand
It’s not like years ago
The fear of getting caught
The recklessness in water
They cannot see me naked
These things they go away
We cannot go back, we cannot go back, we cannot go back. How terrifying that it must be so, to only move forward, how trapping and tricking and troubling it feels. A human like an animal, yet thinking we feel and know so much more than we ever do. A human trying to return to childhood – vain, impossible mission – stupid, wasteful hope. We cannot go back. We cannot go back. We cannot go back.
Chanted like a mantra – cadence of sound, repetition of madness – set it to music, set it to fire, set it to rain and hell and the fuzzy mind of a person caught underwater, life snuffed out in quick mortal panic.
Nightswimming…
…remembering that night…
One night in a summer almost forgotten a girl took my hand, led me into a bit of the woods, wanting me to touch her heart, wanting me to feel something I could never feel. We looked out at a dark river that barely distinguished itself from the night, danger and peril and the stirrings of love – all escaping my notice or care. Cold too, if we had been close enough to pull at its ripples, if we’d been that brave.
One night in a winter barely remembered a boy let my hand fall from his for the last time. Walking away from a life I thought we’d share, taking a different path from mine, the journey suddenly and irrevocably becoming the journeys – what once was one was now two, as it was in the beginning – and then the prayer I’d learned as a child – is now, and ever shall be the world without end.
You I thought I knew you
You I cannot judge
You I thought you knew me
This one laughing quietly
Underneath my breath
Nightswimming…
