The Ocean Remembers

i don't remember what silence sounds like. there is only the tide. it rises with me. it follows me from room to room like seawater carried home inside my shoes. the voice is never loud at first. it comes in like the tide does. gentle enough that i almost mistake it for my own thoughts. you'll never be enough. another wave. you're too much. another. they'd breathe easier without you. soon i can't tell where the ocean ends and i begin. sometimes i wonder if i was the one who walked into the water. i can almost remember standing on the shore. the sand was warm. the sky was open. there were no weights around my ankles. or maybe there were. maybe i tied them myself. maybe someone else did and i just forgot whose hands they were. memory sinks faster than stone. all i know is that one day walking became drifting. drifting became sinking. and now i don't even notice the water entering my lungs. it happens so slowly. one breath. one swallow. one wave at a time. until breathing feels like something that belongs to everyone else. the strange thing is i don't fight anymore. my body still moves. it wakes. it works. it smiles when it's supposed to. it answers questions. it remembers to say i'm okay. but none of it feels like swimming. it feels like a body floating exactly where the current left it. the voice likes it that way. it tells me this is where i belong. beneath the surface. where no one has to hear me. where i can disappear without ever leaving. sometimes i almost believe it. sometimes i wonder if this ocean is punishment for something i can't remember doing. as if i was born already owing the sea. every evening the tide pulls me under. every morning it spits me back onto the shore. heavy. salt-soaked. barely breathing. only to wait for the water to find me again. it always does. i tell myself tomorrow i'll walk the other direction. but the tide already knows my name. and somehow it always finds me before i find myself.