Just One of 500 Lucky Subscribers

Just One of 500 Lucky Subscribers

Wide, blue---

I couldn't see the end of it--- never been to the ocean before, and now--- on a

boat to the Bahamas, a free trip we won by subscribing to a magazine---

Imagine... Popular Mechanics sent me here... this depth, this darkness

beneath me

There is a hollow spot inside everyone's chest--- I'm convinced--- it creates a vacuum

that sucks at the underside of your lungs, your liver, until you fill it:

Here on the Atlantic, dusk and a storm moving quietly on the horizon, I have only

two options for satisfying the vacuum... salt water, or fear... I

choose the fear

A cloud slides to the side like the inner eyelid of a toad and sunlight strikes the

deck, my tennis shoes, canvas soaked and drying slowly white with crystals---

steam rising in the last low rays, and I'm on this voyage over darkness and

breathlessness, the shipwrecks of 800 years--- all because I didn't choose Field and Stream.