"It's fascinating!" I exclaim from the tree.
Just before I wrap hungry hands around the fraying rope and swing out, soaring through the air. I let go high above the lake and dive headfirst into this newfound infatuation.
But as my head breaks the surface and I gasp for a breath of air, I find my limbs tiring. Yet I only glimpsed a fraction of this soggy new place as my eager eyes squinted into its murky depths.
I found an ephemeral euphoria, submerged in my underwater wonder. Arrested all too soon by my own defects. Clawing my way back to the surface as my chest burns for air. Not knowing that as I do, I exhaust my precious interest as well as my body.
For when I look around I find the waves are too clear. They have yielded the mystery of the darkness. My oasis has lost its luster.
"If only I could hold my breath longer," I curse my failing lungs.
The current gathers me up, I'm too tired to fight. As it carries me to shore I look back in despair. I lament my lethargy, too weak to even shake a trembling fist at the heavens.
The waters turn green around me as my poisonous affections leech out, polluting my beloved lagoon.
"Why was I born without gills?!" I cry at the fish, outraged by my plight.
I desperately lunge for them, listless hands betraying my urgency. I am overwhelmed by a panicked need to grab them, shake them, make them understand how lucky they are. What a gift it is to not be burdened by an abhorrent need for air.
But my efforts are in vain. Blinded by the algae that flourishes in my resentment, my hands blunder in the clouded water, continuously coming up empty in a pathetic display of ineptitude. My covetous sin my own undoing.
I weep for my loss as I lay wasted on the muddy shore, carelessly discarded by the traitorous waters I so craved. I grieve for that exhilarating rush when first crashing into those enthralling depths - now emerald in my wake. I look on in anguish, tormented by the incessant waves lapping at my ankles, mocking me. I mourn for that ever elusive intrigue, now but phantom in the light.
I surrender in sorrow as I feel the dreadful indifference seep into my bones and infect my soul; extinguishing what fragile passion remained in its crushing grip. I bemoan my wretched fate, head clasped in hands water-logged with apathy. Defeated by this loathsome affliction that plagues me. It's terminal I fear.
I shed a final tear and despise it for its cowardice. It falls to the ground and the impact sounds eerily similar to a gunshot.
Weary legs carry me away as I turn in reluctant resignation from the monument to my vices. And before me I find a daunting stretch of endless lakes. Ponds, creeks, pools, lochs, some so large I cannot see their end, others no bigger than a puddle. Some gloriously unfamiliar, others already tragically contaminated by my disease.
They reach past the horizon and swallow me in their vastness. They stand before me in challenge. Full of deceptive promises that they will be the one to finally give me gills.
There is at least one thing I share with the fish, I decide as I stride, filled with optimism, towards an alluring river - the virtue of a short memory. My own pitiful recollection is my salvation in this marshy purgatory to which I am damned.
"Surely this will be the one," I think naively as I prepare to jump in.
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