By Bob Mitchley

I was a self-discoverer of how to disarm from self- loathing.

I decided one dreary morn to tread softly, where nobody in their right mind should go. In haste, at the river''s edge, I tiptoed over fractured ice in my bare feet in a quest for finding something wild and raw, which now I can no longer repeat; I was sure of what I had left behind, but a dire thirst for love and acceptance drove me to rediscover nuances that lie frozen in time.  

The eerie cracking sound let me know that I was about to break through…

In a flash, I thought back, how I was a fool for tempting God, no matter what my state of mind. Why…why am I doing this dreadful act? What do I hope to prove to myself, or for that matter, anybody else?

There’s a hole somewhere upstream with my name etched into the placid ice. But at this rate, I’ll never see it. There’s no turning back now, there’s no escape from my watery plot; there’s no, oops, I’ve changed my mind and now I want to live. Nope, there is no possible way of finding that jagged hole and climbing out to where I can finally breathe again. Wouldn’t it be so awesome, just like being reborn and sucking in precious air for the first time, and having a renewed zest for life?

Hey, help, anybody, please save me, I want to live! I’ve made a gross miscalculation. Suddenly, the sun is brazen in all its glory, the way it glances across the lens of hard chill river water, looking as if a red hot fire has been lit over top of me. Maybe it can cut through the ice like a laser and free me! Just then, yes, I see faces in angular proportion to the soles of cleated feet. Faces of people who can help me… They’re shouldering axes…But I see anguish in those faces. I can sense their fear as they desperately try to save me…chopping, spraying shards of glass into their faces without any regard for their own tearful eyes. Hurry, please, I don’t have much time left.

Bless their charitable little hearts, every last one of them. But I think they can tell that I have been floating here for many days now, probably for many miles. I’m sure that my skin has turned into a crinkled old gray prune as I lie here on the underside of ice, alone.