Salt stings my eyes as I force them open. BLUE. It stretches out for miles and miles all the way to the ends of the world, where no man has ever walked. It’s clear as day at first. But as I peer farther, it all begins to blend into this gray haze. Everything is silent around me except for the occasional bloop of tiny bubbles escaping my nose, frantically fleeing to the surface. I am alone floating weightlessly with a blank canvas of a mind, an occasional drop of color trickling down through the emptiness, leaving behind a faint trail of blues, purples, and greens - insignificant, forgotten in the mere span of minutes, but never erased. 

I feel breathless as my lungs ache for air. They pulse in a soft rhythm along with my heartbeat, sending a cool tingle through my veins -not breathless in the way one might feel like a side effect of elation, floating up in the clouds- but more in the sense of being grounded, my roots so deeply ingrained within the yellow matted sand of the ocean floor, where a charred stingray emerges from its slumber, its body rippling like calm waves, and the pearly orbs of water molecules swimming among the rainbow fish, their silvery scales reflecting different colors with each movement, as the light seems to bend only to their will. 

As I watch these curious creatures scurrying in and out of the tiny crevices of their coral kingdom, pinkish crabs scuttling around, disappearing into the reef, and neon blue eels stretching their long necks to peek out of their dwellings, I find myself amazed. Within the huge world that lies out there, all black and white, there is a tiny place deep within that can only be seen by those who are willing to open their eyes to it, where colors and clarities seem to intertwine. 

All at once, my lungs squeeze, and my legs start kicking - a thoughtless act. I break the surface of the waters to find an amber sky, so bright I almost could’ve mistaken it for the sun. The true sun, though, persistent and fiery like the spirit of a growing flame, sits on the horizon, casting its golden light upon the water. Thousands of bright petals lay upon the calm waves, like the first breath of fall, bringing me back to when I used to walk through that tiny park next to my grandparents’ old, grey apartment with my mom, whose name I never knew of, the fire-colored, ‘autumned’ leaves softly crunching below our feet with each step. Hand in hand, I can still feel the warm, faithful clasp of my mother’s worn-over fingers, those which had caressed me as I faded away into that perfect dream world each night, those that had wiped my black tears as I shivered from discovering the sheer coldness of a human heart, and those that continue to pull me along, guiding me safely through the haze of life, something I hope to be able to do to another soul one day, to pass along as a story - one which I am telling now.

A dark place of mystery and danger many find the vast sea to be. But here I am, empty yet full, covered by a blanket of blue.