Surfacing
“So send the pain below. Send the pain below.”
- Chevelle, Send the Pain Below
She glides, a yellow and black sail, tumbling in the deep air. Dances around a flutter of white. The heat is pulling sweat from my skin as I sit here typing, watching the butterflies swirl. Clouds make the shade tidal. It is dim…then over-exposed. I’m breathing, in it. Music through ‘phones. Heart, beating. Pushing down, swimming up. Surfacing is hard.
“Don’t turn away and leave me to bleed in this hole of a place — ‘cause what if I never break?”
- Interpol, Lights
Perfect blue, above. Rose white, to my left. Our lives are fairytales that we make up and tell ourselves. Lately, my storytelling sucks. Submerged in that green water, letting it carry me where it wishes. Watching characters, narratives, symbols and metaphors float and tumble around me, dreamlike and untouchable.
“There are no fires of hell. There is only Mercy.”
- Innocence Mission, Mercy
The third shade of butterfly just fluttered by. This one velvety blue-black. Indigo, hah. A doe and her dappled children are eating apples under the trees. There are lines in the cerulean sky. I don’t know what any of it means. I used to know what I meant. But I was mistaken — or, perhaps, correct only for a time.
“Pushing from above and below. Shadows with no substance, in the shape of men.”
Genesis, Home By The Sea
Underwater, there is peace in the pain of holding your breath. An amniotic weightlessness. With lungs stilled, there is only the pulse of your heart and the shimmer of thought. Water holds great love — and great destruction. The black below is endless. From underneath, the surface looks like a second sky. Coming up, breeching, reveals yet another. Surface, and all is still below — and above. I miss you, Mom.
“If man is five, and the devil is six — then God is seven…”
- Pixies, Monkey Gone To Heaven
And the fourth is orange, like fire. True. Burning like a heart. This span has been a confetti of butterflies. Each tumbling through. I don’t feel any better. I don’t feel any worse. The loss of you all is like a flame around my heart. I’m breathing, again, with the black below me. It never goes away. But I’m counting up. Surfacing. Because I choose to.