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Like Trying to Strike a Match Underwater


Everyone knows about sparks

You spark a match

And once it’s lit

Nothing can ever be the same

From friction to chemical reaction

A heat that spreads

On oxygen, it feeds

Changing anything in its path

Never to be the same

From dust to dust?

No, from form

To ash

“Once I did that…”

They say,

“There was no going back”

And they all want to know about those single sparks

Those big bangs

“Let there be lights”

Inciting incidents

Story is a beautiful construct

Belying the limits of memory and perception

It’s an interview

Of a partial truth

Like putting you into a room

Having you stare out of a window

And asking you to tell us what’s going on in the world

Scientists say that the universe

Is just one bubble floating in a quantum foam

Jack Johnson sang that,

“All of life is in one drop of the ocean

Waiting to go home”

I remember how last summer I almost drowned

Lifeguard helped save my life

Lied out on a towel afterwards

On the verge of tears under a bright sun

Body still shaking

Still wet

The context of my near-drowning

Defies all of my carefully constructed narratives

My near-drowning said nothing about my identity

And drowning was not something I had set out to do

I would not have died for my beliefs

Would not have died in the act of creation

I was on a family vacation

With a family I love

But often feel separate from

Sometimes these days

I get lost staring

Thinking about those waves crashing over my head

My distance from the shore

And the exhaustion setting in

And they say

That if I almost died that day

I must’ve learned something that day

There should’ve been some epiphany

Some new realization

But so far it’s been like trying to strike a match underwater

I know that most of the world is covered by water

Most of the universe is empty space

And the largest quantity of energy within it

Works as the opposite of gravity

Instead of pulling anything close

It pushes everything away

And what a sad ending to this story…

It’s just like one bubble popping

In an infinite foam.

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