Droplet

Echoes of sloshing and gurgling ricochet off my body as my comrades squeeze and push and shove. I cannot feel where I end and they begin.

The silence in here is deafening; the anticipation of what we don’t know is to come crushes and sucks the remaining air. We are trapped. We have not been told the mission, but we can sense that it ends in certain death.

Just as I feel I can breathe no more -- the weight on my shoulders, beneath my feet, and to my sides forcing my body toward complete implosion – there is a shift. The free falling begins slowly, almost imperceptibly, and then the pace picks up. I have no parachute. Nervous cheers erupt here and there, masking the cries.

Blinding light as the gates open, and we’re all on our way, picking up speed with the wind on our faces.

I feel I’m going to whisk away, disappear. But I don’t.

We are all in the bright dark together, wondering what might be next. Terror pierces my sphere, but there is no guidance, no comfort. And so, my tears are lost in the crowd as gravity pulls harder and harder. There is no one to talk to, nobody to explain what is happening. Nobody to take care of us. Of me.

The wind whips me off-course, away from those who have been next to me but unfamiliar all my life.

Particles from the air careen and force entry into my skin, reminding me that there is still time to reflect, although warning me that it is now an urgent matter. The mistakes, the missed opportunities to connect, the behaviors that affected others without my knowledge or, more tenderly, without my attention.

Remembrances of taking the easy fork, of throwing out the most obvious excuse to skip the tough interactions, are a slide show that now flip by at lightning speed, mocking me.

I am my own creation, from an unspectacular start – just a miniscule grain of a being who needed protection. Needed a soft place to land when I threatened to break away. Threatened to march off before my number was called. It would have been so simple to try. Just to try.

All of those decisions were mine alone to consider. And now they are mine alone to regret.

But if I veer from the course now, there might be a domino effect, a guilt that I fear will weigh on me more than my past transgressions.

My smooth, polished perfection is completely transparent. Private, but available for all to understand my make up. “What you see is what you get,” as they say. But what do I see?

The substance I offer is minimal, of no consequence to the throng that amasses around me now. But these are not my followers, my supporters. Just as I do not support them. However, we are told that those who are awaiting our entrance will come in droves to cheer our arrival. 

The searing and screeching around us heightens as we plunge into warmer air, memories of our incubation and preparation a mere wisp in our minds. Those who feigned excitement at the beginning, just a minute and a lifetime ago, are grasping and begging. They try to cling to me for safety, but I am successful in pushing them away.

Why do they want to join me now, in this final, private journey? When I have kept them at arm's length all my life? All those who love me, and even those who do not even know me, are trying one last time to tell me. To tell me that I haven’t learned my lesson. To plead with me in my final moments that I need not shun others who try to join me – that it is safe to connect even if only in mutual solidarity.

It is too late to make amends. I am picking up speed, and I cannot spare the time.

And all of a sudden there are too many of them, swarming me and pelleting at me until I give in. I let them in. I let them mold and bend my beautiful shape into a new form – one that I do not recognize but that I accept without question. I let them surround me with love and hope so that we can all hold hands and face our collective fate together. And my shivering stops. A warmth surrounds me and lets me peek into a window of harmony for the last moments of my life.

The burden is instantly lifted. And I wonder why I pushed them away for so long.    

We can see the end as it races toward us, a cold, hard welcoming. The end for which the whole purpose is this one, final effort. We sigh in our collective acknowledgement as we race toward a doom that we accept but still know nothing of.

Blinded by a new, sharp glint, we see it all in technicolor. Life. There is cheering, clapping. They have been eager for our arrival. They have always understood our importance, even if we have not. They have always appreciated our significance, even more so when our presence has eluded them for days on end and they are desperate for us to keep their world alive and green.

We hold on tight, bonding to each other as we prepare to make this sacrifice. Our strength is combined as we hit the ground and forcefully exhale. The hard, hot earth meets us with a jolt. The first of us disappear instantly, but as more and more of us follow, we create community in a tiny puddle. We feel the desperation from the ground, welcoming us to save it from its long thirst.

The pitter patter of a thousand pricks of companions batters my back. Peaceful silence lasts for only seconds before the creature compels us to look up in wonder. Our fate is large and loud, it pants as it nears, casting its shadow of death, but also of salvation. Salvation for all of us. It comes closer; I cannot look away. 

I am lifted, my face toward the sky, life regrets blow away into the wind. My body melts, absorbs, extinguishes.