For Riusuke Fukahori.
Underwater, direction can be difficult. You think to yourself, I am swimming, and that’s what matters.
The past can be a sinking thing. The longer it falls, the fewer remember, until it is all but gone, surrendered to nothingness, the edges bleeding, bonding with what can only be imagined.
They say that knowledge is light.
There are layers between us. My grandmother swims slower now, water in my eyes her face grows cloudy, though she gapes up at the sun often enough unhindered. That is the thing of it, the soul does not age. We swim, crowing, crowning the water, shimmering. No idea that we are pruning, eclipsed moment to moment, counting stars and bellies above, wondering where all this water came from.
When we ask the Maker, he says we must drink the living water. The water holds us up. Stops the sinking. We look up and up and up. Ask again about the past, the future. He nods slowly, concentrating on the likeness of the image.
Answers don’t always satisfy. All the Anchors say We are swimming, and that’s what matters. Worries eat the same way that questions do. They worry about drought, about scales,
about where the current is going. All my lovers said they weren’t strong swimmers.
From above it is easy to imagine that it is all happening at once. Only the Maker sits at the surface. Casting his eyes over all of us in the same glance. And my Grandmother is, to him, as bright as the day she was born, the swimmers beyond her equally so. When asked about creation, he expresses Love. In an interview he says the beginning is about selecting the right vessel. We swim and count our layers. Call them centuries.
No-one ever stops to wonder, where the bowl ends – where it begins.
Oak Ayling is a Pushcart Prize Nominated Cornish Poet and Writer, Editor in Chief of Spare Parts Literary Magazine and Hungry Christian. Her debut pamphlet ‘With Love From The Curator’ was published in 2021 by Indigo Dreams Publishing.
IG/TW: @oakayling
Transfigured Lit—A Flash Fiction Journal 