I swam toward the middle, away from the cliff-jumpers and their noise, until it was just the lake, the fish, and me. The water was icy, shocking, stealing my breath, flushing my skin pink.I had a moment of the wondering mind like, what if I sunk to the bottom, there’s no boats out here, what if there’s something lurking beneath hoping to snatch me, what if I get hypothermia for this water is freezing. But I remembered, those that live in fear never experience true life. Near the center, where voices no longer carried, I floated in the color of sapphire, ears slipping beneath the surface, eyes tilted to the sky. I closed my lids, steadied my breath, and listened to the kind of silence we rarely hear. A silence held by the deepest lake, by the ruins of a fallen mountain. Only company being the occasional coral shimmer and rainbow glitter of salmon or trout. Simply floating in the color of sapphire, that could hold the heaviest thought. And so, this is how it feels to be alive, this is how to feels to be known.