Aquarium

At the aquarium, I wander from tank to tank, watching the fish swim back and forth. I wonder what they're thinking, if they can think. I wonder if they miss the ocean, if they're lost like Nemo was, or if they never knew any different. But most of all, I envy them, because they can't know what it's like to drown.
And I wish my lungs were gills, because maybe then I wouldn't be drowning in waves and waves of self-pity. Maybe then I would know how to swim. Maybe then I wouldn't feel lost in this great big ocean that is life.
But my lungs are just lungs and they do not know how to carry on underwater. They burn and they fail me and suddenly I am coughing, drowning. I need oxygen. Without it I can't breathe. Maybe the fish will show me how.
I sit at the bottom, on the ocean floor of life and I wonder how I got here. How I arrived at this hostile environment where a two-lunged no-gilled human like me cannot possibly survive. And then I realize, I'm the only one making myself stay.
It takes pushing away from the bottom, swimming upwards towards that ever-hopeful light, breaking through the barrier, gasping for breath, to realize that you knew how to swim all along.
Just keep swimming.