Bliss

This is the last taste of bliss you’ll ever have.

Savor it well.

Make sure you truly taste the Long Island iced tea; make sure you hold the warm, soft hand and remember how it feels; make sure you memorize how the other body feels against yours.

This is the last taste of bliss you’ll ever have.

When you walk out to the ocean, look back at the beach, just for beauty’s sake. Watch the waves crash over the rocks, like a burst of cerulean-white moths. If you say anything, make it some saying you’ve held near and dear all of your life. Make sure that it isn’t something cheesy about death. Don’t ruin this.

This is the last taste of bliss you’ll ever have.

Feel the water around your ankles, your calves, your thighs; remember the cold-damp feeling as it seeps through your pants and then sends goosebumps up your spine. Throw up your head and watch the seagulls circle overhead. They know what you’re doing. They won’t stop you. They know this is a private affair, between you and them, and that the beach will only change temporarily because of it. Smile—

This is the last taste of bliss you’ll ever have.

Now the water passes your waist, like a freezing embrace in many winter-worn arms. You raise your arms up. This is it. The water surges upward as you surge out into the water, kicking. Laughing. The tingle of seaweed against your foot doesn’t scare you anymore. You’re not afraid of anything. This is a better high than any of your high school friends ever achieved.

This is the last taste of bliss you’ll ever have.

You smile, but do not laugh, when the arms wrap around your shoulders and pull you down into a deeper embrace. The air inside of you knows a lost cause and streams from you, cold droplets against your face, seeking life and a death of their own. A loss of identity. Inside of the water they are many individual bubbles, but in the air they are one. You touch your now cold, living lips and you pretend that someone is down here with you. A mermaid kiss goodbye.

This is the last taste of bliss you’ll ever have.

It’s waiting. It’s pressure. A sense of tired restraint, and an alien world that your race has yet to penetrate in truth. There is a lagging to your limbs and an ache that begins to drain away the bliss as quickly as it replenishes; and then the pressure increases. Lights like jellyfish dance along the close, sandy floor of the ocean. Sound stretches and breaks in your ears, the rushing of surf overhead becoming the singing of whales. Whale song, so much more fitting to a life than any choir. Lonely.

Bliss.