things i know because i’ve seen our world under the ocean
02/19/2025I dreamt our world. I dreamt it under the ocean. As an unspoken rule, people stayed on the ground, despite our ability to swim in the sky. I swam, though always low to the ground. When I tried to go higher, I was filled with a paralyzing terror. My animal instincts screamed that there were threats up high, predators that swam the deep waters above. Between us and space. Still, I was drawn to swim and I was drawn to the sky.
The transmission towers stretched up and up and their tops disappeared in the thickness of the water. Bacteria clung to metal, and I was filled with a religious sense of awe. The towers are the gods, something whispered inside me.
I worship the towers.
But they are abandoned and wisdom in the slow current told me I was wrong. They are monuments to the gods. Monuments to gods long forgotten. The cells in my body were reading me a history where we abandoned our shrines and our devotion when the water filled the air and the things that hunt in the sky taught us not to swim.
It began to snow. I followed my friends. We avoided the bridges, because they were unstable, because they were under water. The water revealed the bridges that had been built poorly when the world was dry. It highlighted the threats that were hidden by air.
Other bridges, more soundly built, had deteriorated and rotted in the new world. They hung over frozen streams and frozen lakes. We came across a wide lake, stretching on and on into the thickness of the water. My friends did not want to cross the lake. I encouraged them but they were still afraid. There are no bubbles! No cracks! No weak spots! Still they would not step. I stood on solid ice as proof. Still they would not trust.
