Bathroom Monologue: Heart of the Waterfall

Hey there, waterfall. Today I want to plunge my hands into your heart. There, beneath the froth where the crystalline fall hits the blue pool and turns into billions of white bubbles. Up on the trail I just wanted to kneel at your bank, sore knees on this stone, and wash dirty hands in you. The water’s cold and fingers are clean now, but I’m not baptized. I feel dirty everywhere, and something about the sight of you stirs in me the feeling that everything I dislike about me would wash off like grit, if only I plunged my hands where you explode. I’ll wade out there in shoes, socks and pants, and climb the trail back up to the car uncomfortably wet in penance for the privilege, if you’ll let me. May I violate your heart? It will not be like you piercing mine. Yours will be restored in a second, and as soon as I leave you will look as though I was never here. The exhilaration would mean everything to me. It would mean absolution.

But swimming is illegal here, and I can’t break that law. There are people who spend time and money to keep you. They don’t have ultimate right, and none are here to see it and be offended, but it would still wrong them. I cannot harm your keepers, even if only in idea.

Still I want more than my wrists in this pool. You’re so cold you sting. My fingernails are numb and I want more. So blue, so wrongly blue are your depths that I think if I submerged, if I went deep enough, I would find you warm. The downpour would dash against my scalp and my clothes would stick to me like shreds of skin. Everything I can’t forgive myself for would wash down your streams. Every time I broke the speed limit, lied to a lover or wished worse on a man who deserved better would trickle away. My sins would be your soil, and would even you notice a few grains more in your mud?

I’d like to swim in you afterwards, feel you wash over me. But I can’t break the laws of those that keep you.

I also don’t have to tell anyone if I do.