Let slip the time

Vital. Life after life. Negating death. A water fills my lungs, surrounded by steel walls, a trap, a prison, a deadly cannister of man’s doing, exploding in mid-sentence. Weep I the tears mixing with the gushing salt water, every helpless gulp, the strangest taste. My chest swells, a coolness spreads through my torso, like being wrapped in arctic emotions, banishing the struggle for breath. The briefest shrieks frightening, but in an instant, gone, bodies float before me with terrified expressions, lost in them, the families left on the surface. I bear them. I count them as mine. Guilt swells just the same. No heroes medals. What proud insignia would have me? What colors sewn into my uniform would cause this? This vessel cracked in half, in pieces, the suppressed sounds, once the senses we counted upon to counteract such a scene. Counter-measures. Now we descend into cavernous past, like a hazy watery dream. Pictures of the father land, the streets, houses and the smiling mugs of wives and children, bound in secret pockets, there at the bottom of the sea floor, where we let slip the time. When we wake, it will be the breath of another. Perhaps in Russia. Perhaps on Mars. That’s when I’ll see you again, and yet again. Signed the sub commander who made the wrong call. A most deadly call.