Old Man Fishing in the Moss

He still couldn’t decide how to put it in words. Drowning in ferns but wishing it was water. What’s the difference really, between water and fern? He thought the answer obvious, he was a fisherman after all. He couldn’t remember a single thing about fishing yet his muscles seemed to conduct themselves. Clearly proving they were more useful then his mind on any given day. He weeped, though he couldn't remember the reasons for that either. It irritated him for a while. It felt uncomfortable, best described as itchy. His ideas of why he cried swam around in his mind, and he wished there was water there, too. As he was standing there in the trees, he came to the conclusion that he didn’t need a reason to weep, he was simply allowed to do so. The human condition is to cry after all. He wished there was more water. He was instead encapsulated in a sunken green. Green was nice, he decided. He could manage. He assembled his line, placing a vial of his tears on the end as bait. He was minimally conscious of what his hands were doing, more fascinated by the process. He swung his rod behind him. He was old, he could tell by the pain in his right shoulder. He made a face about it, but at the end of the day his face wasn’t real anyways, and he knew that better than anyone. He couldn’t remember why that was true. He shot the pole back and watched as the moss swallowed his bait. Who knows what he could catch. He missed the water though. More than his memories he missed the water. He was surrounded by wet and yet there was no water except in his eyes. There was an ache in his chest, hollow like the forest around him. Where had the water gone? Where was his life? It felt wrong that he existed without water to swim in. Unreal and superficial. Like eating dry paper and calling it a meal. That’s odd, he thought. I don’t remember ever swimming before. He could not see properly anymore, the tears became too much as his eyes were overcrowded by the sight of a blurry and green mess around him. Water is what he wanted most in life, but he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t remember the first time he saw it either. He was tired of thinking. Missing something he couldn’t remember was a gnawing pain. A dull ache spread  in his eyes, longing for the memory of what they once saw. The hurt was exhausting. He shut off his mind and laid himself on a log, fishing rod still in hand. He took in the woods around him. To the left there was a trail, and to the right was forbidden. He could vaguely make out figures on the path. He paused his crying and realized that it was, in fact, him on the path! He vaguely remembered this moment in time, many decades ago. He was younger though, and still just a girl. He was a fish still. He was drowning back then, in this old moment in time, seemingly frozen. He watched as his former self walked past him. With her was a young boy, apparently they were friends. He tried to remember any boys he might’ve known back then but came up empty. He watched his younger self giggle and laugh in conversation, at first neither child noticed the old man fishing amongst the moss. The girl, in fact himself, looked back at him briefly and she quickly closed her eyes. She was suffocating underwater in her mind, and she couldn’t see through the rain and the mist, and she was so so sick of all the water. 

The old man sighed and returned to his task of fishing. He missed being young and swimming. He didn’t realize when he was younger that he was never truly at risk of drowning. He used to be a fish, and he wished he could tell the little girl that used to be him that she was not meant for land. He thought of the years he wasted trying to get to the shore, desperately tired of drowning. And now, surrounded by dry humidity, all he wanted was water. It was like the water in the air was taunting him, accusing him of being a fool. To be fair, he was a fool for ever thinking a fish like himself was meant for land. He was desperate for a pond to swim and fish in. He missed breathing. Breathing in the forest didn’t feel correct, like he was supposed to make decisions based on frivolous things that did not matter. Breathing oxygen was the red herring of all arguments. He wanted water in his lungs, he yearned for the freedom of fluid.  But he was bound to land now. Stuck with the moss he had coveted for years. It was all coming back to him. He wept softly in the forest. A tug in his hands reminded him he was still holding his rod. His tears must have fetched something after all. He wound up his rod and evaluated his spoils. Biting the end of his hook was the boy he saw his younger self walking with. The child looked at the old man with wide eyes and said, after gently removing the hook from his mouth, “I have what you need”. The old man knew then exactly what he needed. He wanted to forget the life he once had years prior, he didn’t want to remember he was once a fish in a pond who left for the false promise of happiness. He just wanted to be. He nodded at the boy, and took a deep breath. The boy calmly removed the old man's eyes and looked behind the holes. Just as he thought, the craters were overflowing. He inhaled the scent of algae from the caves left by the eyes and like a dentist he solved the overcrowding by removing a few metaphorical teeth. He placed the eyes back and disappeared into the moss before the man could notice. The old man took a deep breath and exhaled. He still couldn’t quite put it into words.