Buoy
By Katelynn Humbles
The first time I drowned, I was seven.
The water pulled me under with the ease of a hand gripping the scruff of a stray cat—sudden, effortless, indifferent. One moment, I was laughing, my feet stirring up clouds of sand in the shallows; the next, I was weightless, suspended in a world of green and silence. Bubbles slipped from my lips, spiraling upward like silver coins tossed into a wishing well. Sunlight fractured through the surface just out of reach, distant and wavering, an illusion of warmth in the cold. Somewhere far above, a buoy bobbed gently, a flash of red drifting unnoticed at the edge of my vision.
I should have been afraid. I wasn’t.
The ocean did not feel cruel, only vast and impassive. It cradled me in its arms, neither kind nor unkind, simply there. It had no interest in mercy, no malice in its hold—only the quiet patience of something eternal.
Then—hands. Real hands, human hands, yanking me upward, wrenching me from the deep and into the brutal brightness of the shore. I landed hard on the sand, coughing and retching, my lungs burning as air forced its way back in. The world roared around me—waves crashing, voices shouting, my mother sobbing my name like a prayer spat through clenched teeth. Her curls clung to her face in wet tendrils, her hands shaking as they gripped my small shoulders, as if afraid I might slip through her fingers again.
The second time I drowned, I was sixteen.
It happened on dry land, in the passenger seat of a car that belonged to a boy I thought I loved. We were arguing—low at first, like a storm pressing at the windows, then louder, louder, until even the rain on the windshield couldn’t drown us out.
I don’t remember what started it. I only remember how it built, how everything in the car felt too hot and too small. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. I said something I shouldn’t have, or maybe I finally said the truth.
And then he jerked the wheel. Or I did. Maybe I grabbed it. Maybe I wanted him to stop more than I wanted us to keep going.
The road curved, and we didn’t.
For a split second, there was quiet—an unnatural stillness, a held breath in the universe, as though even the world flinched.
Then the guardrail shattered.
The lake rose up to meet us, black and hungry. The windshield cracked like ice. Water slammed through the broken glass and tore the words from my throat before I could say I didn’t mean it. Cold filled my lungs, heavy and endless. It pulled me under. And for a moment, it felt like I was seven again, floating in silence, where nothing hurt.
And then—hands. Always hands. They found me in the dark, clutched at my jacket, dragged me up and out and into the screaming world.
I coughed the lake out of my lungs. I blinked at the flashing red lights. Someone was shouting my name.
I was back on land before I could decide if I wanted to be.
The third time I drowned, I was twenty-four, and there was no water.
There was no rush of water, no violent pull beneath the waves—only the slow, quiet sinking of days that stretched too long and nights that never seemed to end. Dishes piled in the sink, untouched. Emails sat unread. Calls went to voicemail, the words We haven’t heard from you in a while dissolving into static before I could press delete.
I let the milk expire in the fridge. I let the plants wither in their pots. I let the laundry spill from the hamper, soft hills of cotton and denim that I stepped over without thought.
When people asked how I was, I smiled, lips stretching just wide enough to pass. Busy, I would say, though the hours yawned empty before me. Tired, though sleep never came easy. Fine. Always fine.
Fine people did not sit in parked cars long after the engine had been shut off, staring at the dashboard, waiting for some invisible weight to lift. Fine people did not spend hours wandering grocery store aisles only to leave empty-handed, overwhelmed by the brightness of the fluorescents and by the indecision of choosing between brands of bread. Fine people did not lie awake at night, tracing the cracks in the ceiling like a map to somewhere that no longer existed.
The world moved forward, and I stayed still.
One evening, I stood ankle-deep in the ocean, the tide licking at my skin, cool and insistent. The wind pressed against my back, pushing, nudging. The horizon stretched wide, an unbroken line between sea and sky. The kind of endlessness that made it easy to believe in disappearing.
Waves rolled in, foaming at my calves, my knees. I stepped forward, water curling higher, the sand shifting beneath my feet like it, too, was unsure whether to hold on or let go.
Something in the distance flickered—an orange buoy, dipping and rising with the swell. A reminder that things could float.
A wave surged, strong enough to unsteady me, knocking me backward with a sharp gasp. My hands hit the sand first, then my back, then my head. The world tilted, the sky spinning, salt filling my mouth.
For a moment, I let it happen.
Then, my body moved before my mind could decide—lungs heaving, arms pressing into the sand, legs kicking against the retreating tide. I sat up, coughing, spitting seawater, hair clinging to my face in damp threads. My hands dug into the shore, fingers curling around wet earth as if testing its solidity.
The ocean swirled around my ankles, a final touch before pulling away. A hush settled between waves, between breaths, between heartbeats. I listened.
The horizon had not changed. The wind still pressed against my back.
The buoy still bobbed in the distance, a small, steady thing.
THE END
Author Bio: Katelynn Humbles is a writer and visual artist whose work emerges from the quiet rhythms of rural Dutch Pennsylvania. Her work, appearing in Welter, Wingless Dreamer, Tiny Molecules, Shoofly Literary Magazine, and Essence Fine Arts and Literary Magazine, delves into the nuanced intersections of selfhood, connection, and the unspoken spaces between. Currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing at Kutztown University, Katelynn weaves language and art into explorations of identity, intimacy, and the threads that bind us to place and people. You can find her @katelynnhumbles on Instagram.