there is a city under the waves.
i first glimpsed it when i was about three years old.
i had been walking too close to the shorebreak on a windswept beach. i'm not sure why i was walking there alone, but i was. i turned my head to look over my shoulder, squinting as the sand stung my bare skin, i could just barely see them, my father, my mother, and my older brother, sitting on a goza mat at the crest of the sloping beach. they didn't seem to see me. they were chatting happily amongst themselves. as always, they seemed to be in a bubble all their own, a family unit that had been complete before i came along.
the roar of the wind in my ears almost concealed the periodic thundering of the waves, crashing to my left. i was far enough from the break that the white frothy water slithering across the sand failed to touch my feet. i suppose i imagined myself safe enough, and kept walking, my soles slapping upon the sand made solid by the seawater.
the wave caught me by surprise. i had just been about to spin around to check whether my family was still ignoring me. it was in the midst of that act that a curtain of heavy darkness closed over me and enveloped me. for long, confusing moments, i was tossed in the argument of dark currents. my body tried to take on the shape of those conflicts, my joints flopping in odd angles, like a marionette loosed of its cords.
my reemergence felt like an explosion. suddenly, i could hear again, and breathe again. light burst into my salted, stinging eyes. i struggled to reorient myself as quickly as i could. i planted a palm into the soupy white sand. i gasped
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