Tale of Flow - Brandon Tietje

I was born into this stream.

I was raised on promises that one day I would find a great river.

That this river's current would be strong and wise.

That it would guide me to the ocean where I would be free.

Soon I learned the signs that would mark the miles I walked.

The hurdles I would climb. True trials and tribulations that would judge me while the streams.

rivers and rains.

flowed over me.

Each one I could recognize.

Each stream carried souls down paths that had been carved by eons of storms.

That each course was destined to be taken by each one of us.

As easily as I could flow one way, I could be taken down by another.

That I would see droughts that would cloud my mind with doubt.

That the only way to flow is down.

In lieu of the stories told to me in my youth.

I could be easily fished out of my expected stream.

I could be dropped in a desert.

even a puddle on a gravel road.

The ocean is so far,

there are so many ways to reach the place where the land and water meet.

Yet I can see so many streams that are murky.

Unclean,

Littered with the wastes of others who attempted the journey before.

Dried up by the ones who have yet to come.

Trust in the current and the process will reward.

Just as water can hydrate.

it can also drown.

Following my flow is different from the direction of yours.

After years, sometimes you don’t flow at all. Water can stale, grow to be stagnant.

Yes, it’s warmer here but the water is shallow.

Why is it cold in the deep?

Sometimes the stagnation is interpreted as the end.

Or even reaching the sea.

Oddly even if the water flows, I feel Stagnation. That the flow has taken me down the same path I flowed so long ago.

Rather the paths ahead are the same as the rivers past.

When you subside to the current.

You never know how long it will take you.

You may never even reach the ocean.

You only know that in the end all you can do is submit.

Because the only thing worse than letting it take you.

Is to thrash and splash till a rapid takes you to the riptide.

For these waves starve for those in fear.

The ocean is beautiful it is all that it is promised.

There are so many miles between her and I.

Yet I crave to drift in her waves.

Where my soul will float amongst the Baltic water.

Free from drought.

, free from the land.

Luckily the ocean is but a giant puddle.