Touching death.
It was a golden day, the kind that fools you,
makes you believe the world is soft,
that the sea is only water,
that death is something distant.
The waves kissed the shore, gentle, harmless,
children laughed, the sky stretched wide,
and I
I was only playing.
One step further.
It wouldn’t hurt.
The water rose to my chest, then my shoulders,
cool against my skin, whispering,
Come closer, just a little more
And I listened.
Then, the Mediterranean opened its mouth.
The ground was gone.
I tried to step back, nothing.
I tried to swim, nothing.
The current wrapped around my ankles like hands,
pulling and pulling and pulling.
A wave struck.
I swallowed salt instead of air.
The sky twisted, the world flipped,
my body tossed like it was weightless,
like I was nothing.
I kicked, I thrashed,
I reached for the shore,
but the sea only laughed,
dragging me further, deeper, darker.
This can’t be happening.
I was just there, just fine, just breathing
But the sea does not care for logic,
it does not care for pleas.
I fought,
but it was stronger.
I screamed,
but no one heard.
I reached for the sky,
but my fingers found only water.
Then, something in me shifted.
My muscles burned, my chest ached,
the surface seemed impossibly far.
A voice in my head whispered,
"Maybe this is it."
"Maybe I just… stop."
And then, thoughts.
Not panic. Not terror.
Just thoughts.
My mother.
Would she know? Would she feel it?
When will she notice?
My loved ones.
How would they take the news ?
Would they grieve?
Would they know I thought of them in my last breath?
I was not afraid of death.
But I was afraid of dying.
Afraid of the moment my body would go limp,
lungs bursting, eyes open but unseeing.
Afraid of feeling my own soul slip out of my body,
knowing I could not stop it.
Afraid of watching my loved ones from above, not able to comfort them.
Afraid of the silence that would follow all of that.
I saw my body sinking,
arms weak,
lungs screaming.
I had always thought death would feel like fire,
like something violent, something loud.
But it was so quiet.
Soft.
A slow fading.
A breath stolen by the deep.
In mere seconds, my entire life played before my eyes,
a reel of memories unraveling faster than I could grasp.
Then hands.
Hands.
Someone real, someone strong,
My saviour,
ripping me from the dark,
dragging me back,
to air, to light, to life.
I choked, I gasped,
lungs heaving, body shaking,
fingers clawing at the sand
as if to prove I was still here.
I had drowned.
I had died.
And somehow, I had returned.
But something stayed behind,
a part of me still floating in that deep,
still knowing how easy it is
to be here one second
and gone the next.
The sun still shined.
The waves still crashed.
Life still moved forward.
But I
I was not the same.
SB ♡
