the ocean is unforgiving. it ebbs and flows and drowns. you are perched there on your sailboat; you have thought this out. at your feet is my body, alive but immobile, bound by ropes you twisted yourself using my vocal cords and your shoelaces. the makeshift ropes secure the rocks you've tied to me, made of quartz and the unchanging fact that I always come back. it's almost time. I look at you with fear and desperation, and you look back for just a moment. your face is a board hammered down to your skull. you feel nothing. you pick me up, not looking at me. steadying yourself near the edge of the sailboat, leaning your shin against the wall of the sailboat, you throw me in. the water hits me in stages, the cold slicing my shoulder. the last breath is a hardship, but a necessity. bubbles spore from my nose in the water, ascending in schools but I am only a dropout. I plunge downward. the light is running away from me I would catch up, but i'm not in shape. this was your plan. you sail back to shore; a storm is starting to brew upstairs. you will not give it a second thought -- I have enough second thoughts to supply an army that you command. can you use second thoughts as gunpowder? as a mask? as an escape? I will never find out.