Meditations in water.
Written by Henry McRae - January 2nd, 2026
Content warning: suicidal ideation
See, it was true when I said I couldn’t swim
without you.
Now the ocean at night is your legacy.
Tell me it will be alright as the floodgates fall,
As the windows shatter and the walls dissolve,
With that catch in your voice
which only seeps through when you lie
next to me.
I do not know the difference between a stream and a river,
Only that they both run to something they can not know,
something they can not choose.
They follow the sins of their father, hoping to find Him at the end.
See, as my body drifts out to sea,
caught in
his tide, his current, his crumbling banks.
This is my inheritance, these are my belongings.
I am sorry I no one told me I could dive, headfirst, into you.
They just left me here, treading water,
getting colder as minutes turn to hours turn to you.
Bring me anew into the world.
Cleanse me where others have drowned
with stones in my pockets, promises dissolving on my chapped lips.
‘I shan’t recover this time’.
References
Bell, Q. (1973). Virginia Woolf: A Biography. Volume 2. Mrs Woolf 1912–1941. Hogarth Press. https://archive.org/details/virginiawoolfbio0002bell
‘Meditations in Water’ began as a reflection on the life and death of Virginia Woolf, yet slowly became a way to trace the legacy of grief, loss, and relationships in my life through hers. Growing up in Fremantle, the ocean has always been an inevitability, but over time, I came to see it as a microcosm for these experiences, an agent of creation and destructions, amorphous and cyclical, waves all-consuming until they recede into memory. The final poem is a strange amalgamation of impressions, inspired by reality abstracted and transposed, to channel the enormity of intimacy, family, and, ultimately, renewal.
- Henry McRae