What Lies Beneath Us

I’m floating on the surface of the lake with you. In an old, and tattered boat.

It’s got plugs where holes once were, and we can’t pull the anchors up so every inch we move forward is sluggish and tainted with an equal pull backwards.

It really is beautiful up here though. The sun is shining. The water is calm. The wind is blowing. The clouds are blue. It’s picture perfect. 

But underneath this old boat and perfect scene, lies a dark and overgrown lake. 

Branches and vines shoot up from the bottom, winding and reaching towards the top. 

The water is hot under us, and thick with mud. The depth is too far, too dark to see to the bottom.  Thriving wildlife has been stifled out. Nothing could survive under the surface. The branches are too tumultuous. The weeds are too overgrown. Too invasive to let anything else survive. Nothing pretty lives in the depths beneath us. Nothing with life in it. 

I’m in this boat with you, but I want out. I want out so badly, that I’m almost willing to jump into the blackness below us. I hate the fake security the surface gives. I hate that the beauty from up here, can trick me into forgetting what lies beneath us. 

I know that once I am in the lake, I will be in a fight for my life. Fighting for every breath. Untangling myself from the trees and the vines while they seek to keep me there. Fighting to live, while everything else around me thrives in the death down there. 

But at least it will be real. The fight. The need to find my way out, my lungs burning while I untangle the chaos wrapping around me. At least I know that when I finally come out of it, I’ll shatter the surface! Causing ripples in your scene you paint to be so perfect. 

I’ll ruin your flawless picture when I drag some of the darkness beneath us back up with me. Force you to see what you tried to paint over. So I jump.