peace is wading in the water

Peace is wading in the water,

surrounded by heavy arms pulled down by large oars,

it’s the unsynchronised movement slowing you down,

it’s watching the bubbles in the water,

it’s wearing a bright vest and looking shorter.

Happiness, though, is thinking about it afterwards,

but by afterwards I mean a few years later,

how I know this

I don’t know.

So it is also watching your friends talk,

and dead crabs walk,

and racing to the dock,

and it is takin your gear off and leaping in,

it is achieving half a pull up,

it is turning your boat over,

and it is struggling to snorkel.

It’s your friends making it rain,

and then it’s the actual sky in pain,

and it is someone fulfilling their goals,

and it is falling down dreamy holes,

as in dying of hunger and listening to music,

and ordering food and feeling too sick,

and thinking

hey, we’re living the college life.

a note that feels incomplete

If I had to name this, I wouldn't say it was sadness, this thing that comes knocking at my door. It felt like grief at first, for a life that could've been happier, or for the life that I once had. It's not as if that life was not riddled with sadness either, but after 2019, it just felt like my roots were uprooted. What is a person with no roots? Only a living thing. Only surviving matter.