Come on, get in. We don’t have much time.

You’re going to die.

You flail around in the driftwood, skirting the line of the Styx, trying desperately to breathe under the growing pressure of the water. Trying with every ounce of your being, to survive, knowing that, if you’re already out here, you won’t get out alive. You were dying from the moment you started to live.

Yet you struggle, because death isn’t all you hear when you’re alive. You can always hear the tone of the flat-line, but beyond it, you can hear… a thudding. A hammering, persistent irregularity in the midst of the roar and rage of the sea.

Others are building boats out of fragile hopes and goals and shards of happiness. Some people try to bridge their boat together, only to be rended apart by the waves; some people flounder in their flotsum, trying to reach the next log before the next one crumbles, shoving others under the surface. Some are reaching into the water to fish them out. It’s hard to make out the point of all the effort through the noise, but there’s only one reason people would build rafts and boats in the turbulence of the sea.

It’s to drive forward, to create an intangible path forward, a path that disappears as you create it, only existing in the form of your drive. So, you use your dreams and your persistence to drive yourself forward in the chaos, and when you start to sink, you collect more driftwood for the ship, or you build up the momentum. You pray that it’s enough to carry you as far as you can go, and that your movement gives those who’ve landed around you some sort of drive, and that in turn gives them a little bit more driftwood.

If you drive forward a bit forward, a bit longer, you can pave a path in the ever-changing tides of tide, making monuments you can feel but never touch. And if you decide to go down the invisible road that aligns just so— along the quill, the feather of a leaf, or the veins of a bird— I can be your designated drunk driver for this portion of your ride. However long you decide to stay, you can take my hand, and we can build it together.

Before it’s too late.