The Sailor’s Pet or The Pig that Could not Swim

I can’t swim.
I am like a pig outside its elements.

My legs feel too short inside the deep water and my body too heavy to float.
Unlike mermaids, tuna or cod, I have no buoyancy.
I look puzzled and lost inside the water, and if I am left alone I may just drown.

I was born to be a fish, but by some unfortunate twist of my destiny, I was cursed to be a pig instead. A melancholic pig, because all I ever wished, is to be a fish.

I watch a school of yellow tang dancing around my clumsy trotters, and I keep following them with my tiny dark eyes, until they disappear beyond the water spray. Meanwhile my trotters shake and sink into the salty receding ocean waves. I am left standing alone in the shallow empty puddle.

If I had to be born a pig, why wasn’t I born in the Bahamas? (There, I would have learned how to swim, so I heard.)

I just feel awkward and out of place here, inside my pink skin, which gets easily burned under the open scalding sun.

My round snout is too big, and not made to dig the wet sand like a blue crab’s claw.
You may laugh of my misfortune, as I tell you this – I am forced into the sea every day … while the sailor gets into his boat, and waves goodbye.

The Sailor’s Pet or The Pig that Could not Swim

I have battled my destiny and misfortune since birth, hoping that one day I would wake up as an agile tiger shark, a speedy blue marlin or an elegant manta ray, but that would never happened anyway.

So today, I decided, out of all days, to accept my condition and constitution, and stop fighting the elements and the destiny that life has giving me. I promised myself I won’t panic at the sight of the curly growing waves and the endless deep blue sea.

I will be courageous and I will let go of my fear of being a pig that loves the ocean, but who can’t swim. I will dive into the crystal waters of the blue ocean, until I can not be seen.

And if I survive this adventure, I promise, I will be back here to tell you another tale.