Beyond The Window Of Water

By Nicholas Dante Failla

I owe you both an apology, and an explanation.

You’ve likely grown accustomed to the rhythm of my absence and return. After all, this isn’t the

first time I’ve left you–left me–in the wreckage of my fermenting tumult. It is no accident that I

am here now. Nor is it benign that I must insist:

We return to the night I let you drown.

The porcelain pink tub stood like an altar to the silent, suffocating despair I plunged into it.

I ran the water from the faucet, filling the tub with a soft, whispering promise of escape. The

surface shimmered like liquid glass, inviting, deceptive.

I plunged.

I plunged.

I plunged.

As if the world had rid me from memory in its collective exhale.

At first, the water felt almost gentle. I was weightless. The sounds of life were replaced by the

eerie, deep echo of the chain rattling at the drain. The cruel memories of the day, dissipating into

the water like plumes of ink, swirling around my small framed body. My mouth clamped shut.

Every cell in my body screamed for the sweetness of air that my aching lungs perilously craved.

Yet, I stayed. Suffocating, the parts of myself I would one day learn to love.

I remain committed. With every sharp memory of the day, I plunged myself deeper. Deep enough

to scrub the slurs etched on the walls of my soul. My heart implodes and grows anew to implode

once more inside my chest with every second that passes. The agony hollowed my bones to dust

until I, too, became one with the water. Do you remember what fading after the pain felt like?

Where we went? My grief became a ghost in porcelain and drifted to a plain beyond myself. In

surrender, I crossed a threshold where death’s quiet hand released me into a landscape of prayer

and colour, where the water became sky.

I found myself searching through a hilly forest, in a place I seldom recognise. Yet I felt a familiar

ease about the place, a sacredness. It is where I need to be. I ascended the sacred hills, without a

hope to find an answer. Merely just a thought. Reflecting often feels like writing a eulogy for

myself. If you dig far enough, you will find gratitude, but, if you dig too deep, you’ll reach

sadness. In my stride, I left a faint granular footprint with each step, on the concrete marked by

centuries of vermilion and turmeric. My eyes, casting between the bright red and yellow hues

and the diverse green of the forest. Others walk with me, barefoot and comfortable, draped in a

colourful array of saree or simple cotton dhoti. I wondered what questions they had. Are they

searching for answers or are they mere rhetorical thoughts?

I reached the top of the first of seven temples, and already at such an altitude, I can peek through

the trees at the sprawling city below. The sounds of rickshaw horns and humming engines were

replaced by chaiwala’s kettle whistles and children’s laughter. The air was cooler and carried an

aroma of jasmine oil, sandalwood, soil and a warm savoury perfume that emanated from the

market. The temple market carried the complexity and vivacity of a busy city square. You’re

engulfed instantly between the temple bells, and bargaining voices of stall holders, interrupted

only by the sharp crack of a melon being split on stone. To my great relief, people came alive

again to pause my thoughts after the slow and silent murmur of the steps, and the kind of grief

that has no funeral. Perhaps it is not time.

One child was playing hide and seek with his sisters beneath the tall canopy of a pink

Bougainvillea, but in every round, he was always ‘it’. I've had many sisters in my life, through

both biology and spirit. Grace taught me to fight for myself. Alessandra taught me to be brave

through injustice. Samantha taught me to use my mind and heart in synchronicity. Nicole taught

me that love transcends pain. Olivia taught me to, above all else, shout who you are until your

throat is raw and stand heavy in your truth until the earth clasps your feet.

Would this child choose his sisters if they weren’t assigned to him? Today he would. They seem

happy, and he doesn’t mind forgoing his right to hide. He chooses the challenge of seeking. He

grows more cheerful each time he finds them, as if for the first time. As they chase each other

under stall tables and behind potplants, I find a bench to sit under some shade. The Indian sun

represented the duplicity of humanity, unforgiving yet gentle as it kissed my skin. There is life to

be had. But visions do not last forever, it thinned like mist. Temple bells and children's laughter

fade, replaced by my mother’s frantic knocking. Even the sacred dissolves when life insists itself

upon you.

I should let you know that you did survive.

Since then, you’ve seen the ice caps sprawled like veins across the Rocky Mountains from the

clouds, dancing on rooftops in Chennai under a dusk sky. Flirted for a cigarette in a cosy Golden

Gai bar. Your encyclopedias bloomed to existence, after a lot of required patience. I’ve spent a

lot of time however, consequently, feeling as though I was rehearsing for a life, instead of living.

I’m often a ghost of what didn’t happen, living in the shadow of my phantom possibilities. But

what if I stood in what has happened? Would I be grateful? Resentful? Kinder to myself? Angry?

At some point, albeit only temporarily, I still reach sadness.

There’s tremendous beauty in our stories, and how we pull ourselves from depths many wouldn’t

have the fortitude to fathom. They may be uncomfortable, but they are ours. They demand to be

felt. It’s what you taught me, in that tub decades ago. You’ve mourned long enough waiting for

the world around you to catch up.

If I may impart something to you, to carry forward.

It’s to look no further for the love you desperately seek, a love so divine, than outside your

window. For the trees in all their towering glory, bend in the breeze towards you.

The sky swirls in hues of blue, orange, pink and purple, a mirror to your days of passion, glee,

hope and whimsy. Amidst your days of grey and pain, a mere echo of our human connectedness.

Is the love you desire not found in the way our rivers carve their path through stone, or how our

oceans beckon for you to bathe in its endlessness?

It’s in the glaciers and the snow, the auroras and the rainbows, the storm and the hail.

The constellations beyond our sight.

It’s in the rain that pours to soil the earth for flowers to bloom.

For your eyes delight and your nose basks in its redolence.

Love is in the way the sun anoints your skin, even for a moment until it gently glides across the

green meadows. It's in the orchards and locusts, the reeds and bees, the moss and hot springs.

Love is beyond your window, where the concrete world fades away.

It lives in the deep forest, in the soil and clay, the mushrooms and fungi, butterflies and snakes.

Where a symphony of leaves bristle the path,

Volcanoes erupt to share your rage and storms thunder when your voice shakes.

Where fish swarm with the fortune of community, and birds soar to admire it all from above.

The love you seek is not far away, it’s merely where you are.

It’s in nature that’s honest, loyal and true, consistent in adoration and gloom.

It’s in the hundreds of ancestors, aching in love, who shaped your face with trembling hands.

For they will always, always love you back.

I'd like to tell you that I’m sorry. I’m sorry the world can be cruel. And that I believed its lies

long enough to poison you. You were right, they were lying.

Lying about who you’re meant to be, and what rules you must follow. Your existence is proof

enough that you belong here. Our morning breath is proof of a world that insists we belong to it.

I should have loved you back. Are we there yet? In some ways, we’re still teaching people how

to love us. Some desire the boldness of our laughter, while love still has to whisper its name.

Many relish in our style, our wit, our joy, while queer kids write their final notes to parents who

won’t read them. To call it progress is to mute the mourning. Love with conditions is a spectre, a

fabrication of atomic feeling that can be understood, put to words. Love is wordless, for it is

often misread, but always felt. The future doesn’t unfold the way we think it would. For every

soul who pulled themselves from the tub, emerges a being with bountiful existence. And to those

who don’t emerge, who bleed in the dark, we live for them. Out loud, in pure daylight. I owe you

forgiveness. Forgiveness for every time I thought I was weak, when I was only surviving. For

every silence, every retreat, every attempt to vanish.

But we didn’t vanish, nor did we stay in that tub. We got out. Over and over and over again. I

know this all for certain because, you are me. For life is a balance of the pain and pleasure of

breath, of being human. And still, we breathe.

By Nicholas Dante Failla