It’s like I’ve been underwater and everything that I’ve touched or saw was altered by the water’s bewitching weightlessness
I only saw the beauty of a long-bodied fish swimming circles around me
I admired its teeth and it’s dark eyes and how it’s dorsal fin cut through the water like a hot knife through butter
It was only when I let it get close enough to bite me that I realized it was a shark

And as my blood floated delicately out of my arm and the salt water poured in and burned my screaming lungs, I was still only entranced by the alluring colors and the significance of the pain

Suddenly I was ripped from the water and the bright sun stunned my eyes
My body weak and pruned from enduring the sea too long
My arm tired and hurt
My lungs barely able to capture air

On a boat, being forcefully taken from the ruby-stained haven I thought I had settled my defenseless revere of a body
The screeches of seagulls pericing my ears

The farther away it took me and the more the dazzling, ruby water in the sunlight faded in the distance, the more afflicted I became

I was hurt that the thing I had admired so deeply would only get close so it could harm me
The aching in my bleeding-out arm warped what was once passion and awe in my mind into an rotten frenzy of rage and disbelief

How could I have stayed down so long and not seen what was coming
Why was I the only one being punished for wanting to see only the beauty in my situation
Why was I alone after staying somewhere I didn’t belong for so long for something else
And why was I the only one that people were angry with

The shark didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to bite me, just like he was never taught that it wasn’t okay to hurt me
I was admiring something because I was told it was supposed to be beautiful and because in nature it was

But when you know somethings nature and what it was influenced by its surrounding to do, the only person you can be mad at is yourself