Underwater Dreams

Originally published December 9, 2019

Five steps from the shore,

I dive and enter another world.

A world defined by silence and riotous color.

As my eyes and lungs adjust,

I follow a school of translucent fish.

I wonder, as they tentatively welcome me into their midst,

At this realm they inhabit.

There are no mistakes here.

Everything is accounted for:

Every gliding movement, every sudden plunge,

Every hidden stillness.

Nothing is left to chance.

As light dances off the waves above

And trickles down,

Illuminating secret hallways and hidden caves,

My eyes gorge on luminous corals

And tropical fish, their yellow and black striped bodies

Blending seamlessly into a blue-green world.

I encounter more ominous creatures.

A stingray, drilling through the sand

And I recoil with an ancient fear

Of its perfect symmetry.

I come up for air, rest on a beach

And reflect on the proximity of both our worlds.

What binds us together? Is it memory?

An acknowledgement of a long-lost kinship?

A promise of life in all its dancing forms?

Years later, driving down a highway, eating up the miles

An impossibly-colored parrotfish

Dives through the waters of my mind

Dipping into the crevices of a coral to feed.

I long to follow it, this fellow being

Into depths my body will reject.

Into history,

Into origin.

I am, forever, haunted by the soundless music below.

Note: All my poems are published on medium.com/@asilrashid