Open Water

by Caleb Azumah Nelson

What you’re trying to say is that it’s easier for you to hide in your own darkness, than emerge cloaked in your own vulnerability. Not better, but easier. However, the longer you hold it in, the more likely you are to suffocate. At some point, you must breathe.

she says, ‘I love you, you know?’ She has swum out into open water, and it is not long before you join her. You take but a moment before saying, ‘I love you too.’

You know that to love is both to swim and to drown. You know to love is to be a whole, partial, a joint, a fracture, a heart, a bone. It is to bleed and heal. It is to be in the world, honest. It is to place someone next to your beating heart, in the absolute darkness of your inner, and trust they will hold you close. To love is to trust, to trust is to have faith. How else are you meant to love?

others wanting to co-opt a word they dare not say in your presence, like they have not plucked enough from you;

Your few days together have been spent doing nothing really, which is something, is an intimacy in itself.

You flash the smile of a king but you both know regicide is rife.

Multiple truths do exist, and you do not have to be the sum of your traumas. You came here, to the page, to ask for forgiveness. You came here to tell her you are sorry that you wouldn’t let her hold you in this open water. You came here to tell her how selfish it was to let yourself drown.