I suddenly inhale, a diver breaking the surface, oxygen deprived. There is a pounding in my heart and head that swells on a rising tide of emotion. I’d been walking through the house drifting and rudderless; turning off all the lights I had mindlessly turned on earlier. I am beyond logical thought. I’m searching for something I’ve lost. I know I had it, here in this house, I know it was here. Wasn’t it? Then, with my fingertips on another light switch, I awaken. It was here. It is here. It is still within me, sinuous through my thoughts. I simply have to lower the gill nets of time and technology in order to sweep the glistening memories from the stormy seas of my mind. I cast the nets. The white deck of the trawler, MS Word, waits for the catch. I stifle the blustery wind of the television. I push aside the thoughts of incomplete chores that scream at me like gulls on a tourist beach.
Flashes like greenbacks, just below the surface, swirling in great bait balls, darting for the silted depths the second the net disturbs the surface. I plunge down, swimming in the murky mental waters. The past, fathoms deep, makes my head pound, heart hammer in my ears, lungs silently scream. I fight the darkening spots in my mind’s eye. The pressure mounting, I know these emotions, these sensations and even these smells. Fear and shame. Pain. The odor of school house poster paint. A roar and
then,
then,
nothing.
It’s gone, lost again. Sunk to the dead cold depths of an ocean of suppression. A leviathan from my childhood. Prowling the depths of my seas, I cannot seem to lure it to sunlight. Once there to be named, dissected, classified and with knowledge, banishing the crashing fear. The smooth electronic moonlight glows on an unmarred surface. There will be no catch tonight. I know it is here, here inside me. Lurking, waiting.
sharpwittedfl 