searching for the surface
- Surviving Breast Cancer
- 5 days ago
- 1 min read
By William Laferriere
one falls into the river and the breath catches
not because the current is threatening (all at once), but because it wraps, it circles, it holds—water above, water below, there is only water
a slow eclipse of light and sky
there is a moment—spontaneous, involuntary—of clarity: submerged, the sound distorts, the pulse pounds, limbs fumble against invisible pressure,
inertia settles in
searching for the surface that feels impossibly far
but danger isn’t the falling
it is the decision not to fight, not to move, not to reach; the cold that spreads, a gentle invitation to that very stillness that cloaks itself as relief
pain comes first, then numbness, then a kind of forgetting—letting the river erase the boundaries of body and will, letting the sediment settle in pockets of memory
stillness grows in the silt, panic becomes resignation; the shore fades from possibility while above, the world continues its course
you drown not in the initial moment, but in the moments after, in the staying, in the surrender, in the drift that becomes acceptance
the surface awaits—a promise slightly muted, never denied, only neglected while the river keeps on rolling, indifferent, endless, never questioning
why you do not push upwards
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