I think it would be pretty funny if I was arrested right about now. I’ve been standing here for a noticeably long time.

I decided it would be a good idea to take a swim in the creek near my house. After dinner I felt an empty suppression. I felt a confinement in my chest, and I needed to find a thing I had not yet ruined. I had to find some noun to fold my arms around. I thought long and hard until I remembered the creek, brimming with water a solid green that looked like paint when you drove by it. I used to play on the banks when I was little with my parents, but they always told me no no no no no, don’t go in there, you’ll get sick.

I walked down to the bank right before sunset and watched all the sky’s colors reflect on the opaque shade of dull green that stretched between banks. I was kind of numb. This felt more like a religious obligation than the foolish adventure it would appear to be. I still can’t really explain it, but I know that purpose filled me and I decided to inquire of it.

Instead of jumping right in, I stood there for a while concentrating on the smell. The creek had been infamous for its polluted waters since before I was even born, and in the summer months the occasional fisherman would always reel in dead fish. It smelled spoiled and rotten like food and a little bit like gasoline.

I lost track of time when my phone buzzed in my pocket. Reflexively, I pulled out the battery and tossed both parts into the water. I didn’t care who it was, there was no time for talking. Talking made things and disassembled them. They made personalities and pulled apart feelings. I was to remain intact tonight.

Carefully, I disrobed in the shelter of trees and sat down. It wasn’t too cold for a night in September, and I rubbed at the faint goose bumps on my arms when they began to show. My mind raced; I thought of so many things I wanted to do at that moment. Mostly meaningless impulses, but most of all I had the desire to lay there until morning, until someone found me and to pretend I had amnesia. The simplest way to adopt a new me.

I can’t really say how long it was before I got into the water. I felt minutes of uncertainty and hours of blank minutes wherein certainty was not asked of me. I dove in head first and immediately tasted the brackish flavor of that water that I broke with my body. When I resurfaced, I spat out lumps of gooey green stuff; whatever it was that coated and pervaded the water.

I traveled between banks for a while, stopping here and there to untangle myself from any one of the many foreign objects that paved the floor of the creek.

And then I found a bracelet.

Some rich-looking rhinestone thing that framed a silver heart. Some meaningless token that someone had tried to force love into. Immediately, I pulled it apart link by link and swam back to where I had left my clothes. Before I put them on, I reeled back to whip the pieces back into the creek when I felt a heave between my ribs and my legs gave out. All of the creek gunk I swallowed came back up, and I choked and coughed on the ground for a while. When it was all over, I looked up and remembered the remains of the bracelet that now lay scattered in the dirt like teeth, like something missing.

I remember laying there for a long time staring at them and at some point I noticed hues changing and light fading things out and there was indeed a sun coming up today.

It would have been funny if I got arrested. I don’t know why. Maybe I wouldn’t have found it funny at the time, but I could tell my kids about it.

No I couldn’t.

I hate when people say that.

To ride naked in the back seat of a police car, soaked and tinted green with vomit crusted in my hair and a few dirty rhinestones stuck to the bottom of my feet. My kids would never want to hear it.