content warnings for: death, suicide, drowning

a body of water

and so my body will be brought to the water. by legs (my own
or others), by engine (car or another contraption), or by the simple act
of imagining. it’s hard to say. it’s easier to picture being held
by the neck and brought under. when i was baptized, i was held beneath
the shoulders and made to nearly float. the water was chlorinated,
the blue of man’s creation. it’s easy to say then, it was not my choice.
it was no sacrifice to repeat words i did not understand and do not now remember.

this, though, will be different. i’d prefer to reach the water by foot. superior
has always been my first choice, though i’m afraid to say i may have missed my best
chance. atlantic is my second choice but such a trek, and hitchhiking is not so common
as it once was. my mother once hitchhiked across the border to canada without a single clue
what she was doing, lost in the haze she passed down to me. that’s another story, niagra
has no place here. here, my third choice is lake michigan, which i have only ever seen
from chicago. and what a sight it was, each chance i had to take it. the boardwalk,
the plaster blocks, the horizon licking its trail across the shore.

there are so many bodies of water to choose from, but only one will ever do.
my body will be brought to the water, likely lead by my own two hands.
i don’t mind. there is a pleasant blur to the violence of waves rushing to meet
the shore. the cliffs. miss seuss once spoke of the island, the drive up, the cliffs, the
fudge. i’ve never been. but the decision she circled, laid out for us to dissect.
the body of water present below her. it’s possible we stopped at exactly the same
gas stations. our hands may have passed the same nozzle, pressed the same button to spit out
a twin receipt. does she keep her receipts, do you think? mine make my wallet bulge.
i purge them only when the distended seams threaten to split. i was once told
the coating that make receipts last (though they do not last) makes them unable to be recycled.
i didn’t want to believe it, so i didn’t. it all comes back to that in the end.
i haven’t bought gas in nearly a year. eight months. i recycle as much as i can, which is not enough.

i have not picked my body of water yet, but i’ve told anyone who may have a say in the matter,
when i go, i want to be rapidly decomposed. i’m afraid of fire. i’m claustrophobic.
i do not know what i believe to happen after death, but i know i do not want to be facing my fears
at the end. i want to watch the sky kiss the shore. i want to feel in my chest the understanding
of those who thought the earth was flat. that if you could just sail far enough, you’d reach
the end. drop off. into something new. unknown.