Library

Prompt: Go to a special place and write for a while

I'm sailing on a sea of words. I hear the page turns of waves and breakers, and I see people, others like me. Some on rafts, others rowboats, but most on yachts, so high up they no longer feel the salty splash of a stray sentence, so far gone all they hear is jazz music and computer keys.

But there's a woman to my right. Like me, she sails in a modest vessel, not too big or small. She dips her hands in the spray, smiles as the sun warms her face. She waves at me as she passes, noting my stalled boat. Do I need help, she asks. Am I stuck?

No, I tell her, waving back. I'm just enjoying dipping my toes in the table of contents. She laughs, shouting back that I'd better start catching soon. There are fish everywhere, she says as she zips on by.

I nod, but I don't get out, not yet. I just stare, stare into that sea, that ocean of sentences, and trace my fingers through its depths.

A yacht passes me, the wake from its huge tower of ship rocking me and my boat to and fro. I look up, and high on its deck I see a man, tall and stern. He's staring out, but not at the sea, not at the words. He's staring at the horizon, other things on his mind. He's watching the sky, not the sea, a distance written on his face. The ocean is just a means of travel, after all.

Fish are darting beneath me now. They look up and long to be held and admired before they are thrown back in. They are the kind of fish that revel in their captivity; they are the kind of fish that ache to be touched.

I brush my fingers across their fins, my hands against their spines. But I do not hold them. I do not take them up into my ship, even though they long for it.

A seaman's ship wanders slowly past. His vessel is full of fish, which he tosses into the ocean, each to their own place among the words and the water. I wish to be that seaman, loving all the fish as his job, but I cannot find even one fish to look at. But maybe the fish are not why I am here.

Those who come to the ocean do it for a reason. Some come for the fish; some come because it will take them where they must go. Seamen come because they must, but so few come simply because they can.

I take off my shoes, dropping them into the boat's hull. I sit on the edge, and swing my feet wide over the words and the water. I jump, splashing into the sentences and fighting my way back to the top.

Floating on my back, I stare up at the sky, and I know why I am here. I let myself sink, words and water washing over me.

I do not come for the fish or the travel. I come for the ocean, and I'm drowning in its words.