The wave: prompt

A Slow Rise of Unacceptable

Finding the shore

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

It was a slow flood,
the kind from gentle snow-melting
over warm days when spring whispers

Not a rush or a wave
or a tsunami,
no eddies or whirlpools

It came unnoticed until
I was chin-deep and
dog-paddled to survive

I didn’t see the crawling rise
of unhappiness,
it was acceptably normal

Until it wasn’t, until
my breath was water-logged,
until I couldn’t breathe at all

Then, I saw it, was surrounded
by the relentless tidal grief
for what lay beneath the surface

What I remembered that
I’d forgotten — what used to be
me before the slow swell

No wave to ride to shore,
to a new life, no stream to
carry me effortlessly away

The only way out was in,
churning the stillness around me,
creating momentum