A swamp is how my mother described it. A sinking mud pit of the cruellest design. The lucky ones can sneak around the edges, or swing from the vines, but most are left to be swallowed whole.
Nothing is left behind, though most didn’t carry a lot, have many possessions. Our culture is prideful. We delude ourselves into thinking it’s by choice that we leave nothing behind when swallowed.
We walk with shallow feet, leaving wet prints in our wake that dissolve as easily as delicate tissue paper, rolled back and forth in our hands. They see the dirty, brown bubbles and stinking wafts of breath, but we see a swamp, a natural thing - though unfair it may be.
A swamp is how she described that sinking feeling when you realise, every day you drag yourself from that swamp. All they see is a marsh monster, whose skin has been swallowed whole.
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