he just asked if i ever feel... submerged. and the word, it caught right here, a hitch, because i'd just been there, down where those patterns bloomed around me, and it wasn’t just the water pressing in, it was everything and nothing, like every single nerve ending was vibrating with some kind of knowing, a raw, undeniable current running through my veins, it was less about seeing and more about being seen, or even more, about being utterly dissolved into something bigger, the way my lungs know the deep dark water so they can hold something vast when it arrives, and that sense of being entirely drenched in here, it wasn't a question, it was the answer itself, solid and liquid all at once, sometimes i wonder if the universe is just having a laugh with all this, with this feeling that tasted like exactly where i am, this expansive feeling where my ribs finally remember how far they can stretch, like the whole body is just one big, raw membrane for receiving whatever comes, even the things that feel too immense to hold, but you just hold them anyway because 'this is the one' that matters.