Into the Ocean: The Body on the Shore

Someone died.
Was there a rescue?
Did someone drown?
I dipped my feet too deep.
What am I saying?
You never even touched the surface.
What happened to testing the water?

If Part 1 introduced the ocean, Part 2 steps into it.

The calm surface established earlier begins to fracture.

The language becomes urgent.

Fragmented.

Interrogative.

The poem no longer observes.

It investigates.

I began asking questions—not because I had answers, but because I was trying to understand what had happened.

Or perhaps more honestly,

whether anything had happened at all.

An Investigation Without Evidence

When I wrote this section, I found myself revisiting old diary entries, notes, conversations, and memories.

I read them as though they were evidence in a case.

Searching for inconsistencies.

Looking for the moment everything changed.

Wondering whether I had misunderstood what was happening all along.

Did I misinterpret the situation?

Was I simply too emotional?

Did I become so absorbed in my own feelings that I forgot to consider someone else’s perspective?

Writing this section reminded me of the emotional archaeology I explored in What Remains in the Dark.

It felt like uncovering relics from my own life, hoping that somewhere among them I would find an explanation.

“Someone Died.”

The opening line arrives without warning.

Without context.

Without explanation.

Because of that, it may immediately unsettle the reader.

The poem never identifies who died.

There is no name.

No body.

Only the declaration that something has ended.

As the poem unfolds, it becomes clear that this death is symbolic.

It may be a friendship.

An expectation.

An illusion.

A version of myself.

Or simply the certainty I once carried.

By leaving the loss unnamed, the poem allows it to become universal.

Every reader has experienced a version of this ending.

Looking back on my own life, I realize how many versions of myself have quietly disappeared over the years.

Friendships changed.

Dreams shifted.

People left.

So did certain beliefs about who I thought I was.

Whenever memories of those people return, the emotions are never exactly the same.

They change with me.

Remembering is one thing.

Ruminating is another.

There is a difference between recalling the past and reliving it.

Sometimes I find myself replaying moments with impossible precision—

the words I spoke in my Grade 10 classroom,

the expression on my face when I learned a friend had betrayed me,

the conversations I wish had ended differently.

Memory has a remarkable way of preserving details we thought time would erase.

“Was There a Rescue? Did Someone Drown?”

These questions reveal confusion more than certainty.

I was not recounting events.

I was trying to understand them.

Whenever relationships shift unexpectedly, we instinctively become investigators.

We revisit conversations.

We reconstruct timelines.

We search for the exact moment everything changed.

Was there something that could have been saved?

Could anyone have intervened?

Did someone fail to notice what was happening?

These questions carry guilt as much as curiosity.

They suggest responsibility.

The possibility that someone should have done something differently.

Into the Ocean deliberately leaves this moment ambiguous.

What actually happened?

Who was responsible?

Was there ever a tragedy to begin with?

The answers remain unresolved.

Interestingly, readers familiar with my poem Fresh Off the Campus may recognize emotional threads that help illuminate this section from another perspective.

The Language of Catastrophe

This section borrows the language of disaster.

Drowning.

Rescue.

Death.

Because emotional loss often feels catastrophic while we are living through it.

Not necessarily because the events themselves are dramatic,

but because uncertainty magnifies them.

The mind longs for explanations.

For causes.

For narratives that make pain understandable.

When those answers never arrive, imagination fills the empty spaces.

Sometimes heartbreak feels less like an ending

and more like an unsolved case.

For a long time, I believed someone else owed me closure.

Eventually, I realized something quieter—and perhaps more difficult.

I owed that closure to myself.

“I Dipped My Feet Too Deep.”

This is the moment the investigation turns inward.

For the first time, I stop examining someone else’s actions and begin questioning my own.

The line contains an intentional contradiction.

You cannot dip your feet too deep.

Feet touch the surface.

They are not meant for the depths.

That impossibility is precisely the point.

Somewhere along the way, I crossed an emotional threshold without realizing it.

I entered deeper waters than I intended.

Deeper, perhaps, than the other person ever did.

The ocean remains a metaphor for emotional investment.

Here, I quietly admit something difficult:

I became attached.

The Difference Between Interest and Immersion

One of the hardest realizations in any relationship is discovering that two people were never standing at the same depth.

One person approaches the shoreline.

The other is already swimming.

One is curious.

The other is committed.

One sees possibility.

The other imagines a future.

That imbalance is not always caused by dishonesty.

Sometimes it is simply the way attachment develops.

Growing up, I realized that I connect with people easily.

I build friendships quickly.

I collect memories without meaning to.

The people I meet become woven into my story.

Sometimes they remain for years.

Sometimes only for a season.

Yet even brief encounters often leave lasting impressions.

Looking back, I understand that this openness is both my vulnerability and one of my greatest gifts.

There were moments when I discovered that someone who had become deeply important to me had never experienced our connection in quite the same way.

When they left, I missed them more than I expected.

Not because they had promised forever,

but because I had already made room for them in my life.

For a long time, I viewed this as a weakness.

Now, I see it differently.

Every person I have met has helped shape who I am.

Each friendship has left its own mark.

Most days, I consider that a blessing.

“You Never Even Touched the Surface.”

This line changes everything.

Suddenly, the imagined drowning becomes uncertain.

The rescue may never have been necessary.

The tragedy may have existed only from one perspective.

The other person never entered the emotional waters I occupied.

We were living entirely different experiences while standing in the same moment.

This realization introduces one of the poem’s central ideas:

projection.

Sometimes we mistake our emotional reality for a shared one.

Not because anyone intended harm.

But because hope often fills the spaces where certainty never existed.

Looking back, I realize that the younger version of me wasn’t simply asking to be loved equally.

She longed to receive the same depth of care she naturally gave to others.

She loved generously because that was the language she understood best.

And perhaps that longing explains why unequal affection felt so devastating.

It also made me think about the moments when I failed to reciprocate someone else’s care.

Perhaps, without realizing it, I had stood on the shoreline while someone else believed we were already swimming together.

“What Happened to Testing the Water?”

This final question is directed at everyone.

At the other person.

At the writer/speaker.

At memory itself.

Testing the water suggests caution.

Observation.

Gradual trust.

Somewhere along the way, that caution disappeared.

Curiosity became attachment.

Possibility became certainty.

The shoreline quietly disappeared beneath my feet.

When did that happen?

When did still water become a flood?

The Thought Behind This Section

When I wrote this section, I wasn’t thinking about betrayal.

I was thinking about misinterpretation.

Not malicious misunderstanding.

Simply human misunderstanding.

The kind that happens when hope fills spaces information never occupied.

When possibility begins to feel like certainty.

When assumptions slowly become emotional reality.

I think many of us have experienced relationships where we later realized we had attached greater meaning to something than the other person ever had.

Not because we imagined everything.

Not because our feelings were wrong.

But because emotional experiences rarely unfold symmetrically.

Two people can live through the same interaction while carrying entirely different stories.

Recognizing that difference can be painful.

Yet it can also be liberating.

Because once I accepted that possibility, I stopped searching for a perfect explanation.

Instead, I began accepting complexity.

Death Without a Body

This section introduces death.

Yet it never identifies a victim.

Perhaps that is intentional.

Because what dies here is not a person.

It is certainty.

Expectation.

Projection.

The version of reality I once believed without question.

The investigation continues.

The questions remain unanswered.

But one thing has already changed.

I have begun questioning my own narrative.

And once that happens,

there is no returning to the shoreline unchanged.

My Writing Process

Sometimes the hardest losses are not the ones marked by visible endings.

They leave no body.

No confession.

No final explanation.

Only questions.

Only speculation.

Only the quiet realization that while we believed we were drowning together,

we may never have entered the same water at all.