The Lake

Prose Poem | The whole world lies inside a lake at the edge of time.

I

The whole world lies inside a lake at the edge of time.

Gingerly, I dip a finger into the lake. The water is almost electric, softer than breath. I have been out here for hours, skipping stones and braiding baskets out of dried palm fronds. Now the sun is setting. The evening swells inside the throats of frogs and between the feet of cicadas. The morning flowers droop like the shoulders of the jaded. The birds fly east. I must leave soon.

II

All afternoon, the air around the lake has been fragrant and familiar; the smell of tea boiling in my mother’s house. Of dry coconut toasting in clarified butter. Of the waxy coating of banana leaves melting in the heat. Of someone’s day-old floral perfume.

But there is no one else here but me. I lean forward and peer into the lake. The water is bright, almost too bright to look at. Like staring straight into the sun, or the eyes of a lover. Slowly, my pupils adapt. The water is clearer than I realised. I can see past the wide rippling Os on the surface, past the leaf debris, past the sludge and the silt of memories, past the pebbles, past the tiny, shimmering fish that dart and quiver. And there, at the bottom of the lake, I see something. A blurry outline. A face looking up at me.

III

The face belongs to a woman. I wave at her and she waves back with a smile, her movements slowed and thickened by the water.

Other weak shapes tremble at the bottom of the lake. Suddenly, they snap into focus and I hold my breath at the way they all dance at once: a ferment of faces and places. A mangled bus heaving through a highway. A newborn goat standing up for the first time. A mountain going back to sleep after being awake a thousand years.

IV

And there, beyond the reeds, where the lily pads part and a cloud of mud settles, I can see more. The world itself, rising out of a slumber. I see the fine dust of buildings. The muscular roots of trees creating cracks in concrete. Blood. Metal. A streak of red dirt on someone’s tired forehead. Split skin. Golden wheat growing out of black soil where the dead once lay buried. A baby crying. A dog baring his teeth. Strange fish gliding in the darkest part of the ocean, making their own light. Children fighting a war they inherited. Mineral flowing through the veins of the earth. Someone, somewhere, speaking the last of a dialect. Someone, somewhere, forgetting how to boil milk, stunned, staring at the empty spaces between their fingers.

V

I lean closer, my face nearly touching the water. Only a breath away from the lake, now I can see the rest of it: A blush of stars wheeling across the sky. A distant sun imploding three generations ago. The heat death of the universe. Sound. Silence. I see the woman at the bottom of the lake. She has my face and my hands. My sadness and my laughter. She lives my days. She calls out to me through a jumbled screen of water, beckoning.

VI

Dusk falls around me. A purple ash.

It is getting late. I must leave soon. So I fill my chest with air. I hold in my palm an amulet with my true-name inscribed inside. I say a prayer in nobodies language. I dive into the lake. Bare skin and water. Cold shock. A gasp. A loud, shattering crash and then I am gone. The lake is quiet again. I search among the reeds for hands that look like mine.

Above on the lakeshore, the cicadas sing into a night that lasts forever.

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