The Weight of Silence

They rated me for a depth I never agreed to. Somewhere in childhood a hand pointed down and said: this far, no further, whatever is below stays below.

I learned to move through the pressure without complaint, the way a good hull is built to hold its shape even as the water tries to remember it was once a wave.

Nobody teaches a boy what a hull sounds like when it is close to its limit: a low groan, a tick in the metal that could mean nothing, or everything.

I have made that sound in rooms full of people who heard it as the air conditioning kicking on, as static, as nothing worth turning around for.

Some nights I surface just to breathe like this is normal, to remember there was ever a version of air that did not cost me the whole climb up to reach it.

I do not know how to explain the difference between a vessel that is strong and a vessel that has simply never been asked what it can hold.