Deathwish 025: Natalie
“I inhale and my lungs know it’s over”
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They're all the same. I'm always about to drown. Never drowning, never wet, and up against a beachfront cliff or aboard a ship with glass windows, the waves are impossible, enormous, and there is exactly nowhere to go. Once I was on some sort of sky lift, being ferried out to an island and the water rose so quickly I thought the line had snapped.
I either wake up still and silent, my eyes suddenly open and focused on the squares of my ceiling, or I come to sweating and treading the sheets.
They're not frenetic, these dreams slow-weighted with familiarity, but the panic is palpable like a thin wire.
When the water curls over me, the dream stops. I can't say it's as if I am dying, as if I know I am going to die. It's as if I know from the moment I see the wave that I am already dead. I inhale and my lungs know it's over, just keep expanding until my ribcage cracks, pulling more and more breath for the fucking thrill of it.
The arithmetic of my life never shows through here – I have the endless bloodline of saviors, but they cannot make an appearance this time and I don’t want them to anyway. There is no addition, just me, at the cusp, and I always look up as the wave crests, that simple zero-out-face to that very last moment, lungs exploding.
The end of an asymptote, x approaching that staid infinity and the garrote recedes around me. I don’t shut my eyes, I couldn’t possibly, and then seamlessly -- they are open again.
Nine by nine. Swim, swim, swim.
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To read the previous installment, "Deathwish 024: Leo," go here. To participate in Deathwish, find details here.
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Natalie was born in San Diego, CA and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.