…without form and void… Genesis 1:2

To you, this may be Noah’s Flood—
like that black-and-white gravure
you once saw in an old family Bible.

To me, it is a flood of dreams, of fear:
the sea of childhood nightmares—
not merely rising,
but devouring.

In the beginning, God organized—
dividing light from darkness,
the waters above the deep
from the waters below.

But my flood undid all of that.
It was waves and clouds and wind—
coiling, drowning all in their path.

Light sometimes broke through,
to be swallowed again by indigos,
deep blues, and black.
All reckoning, awe, imminence.

Sea and sky spiraling,
deaf to human pleas.

No shore, no direction.
No left, no right, no up or down—
only water, and a slow, endless sinking.

That flood still haunts me—
not as a dream,
but as an impression.
A moment when safety vanishes,
and the world grows too vast to hold.

Not merely a sense of drowning,
but the dread of being unmoored—
tossed and tumbled,
never reaching bottom.

Not mere darkness,
but the assurance of unbecoming—
the return of the void.