text: A funnel of chopped salt water spilled uncompromisingly down his throat as the realization of what he had just done grasped hold over his body. The cold which enveloped him paled in comparison to the pain of his legs, ribs, hands and feet - deep and pulsing from the outside in, and back through again. When he was young, he had been afraid to jump off of the diving board and now had plunged half a football field into the stark bay below. There he had met a fate which shocked him more alive and wanting for life than he had felt for the past decade. Arms thrashing with the primal motor twitching broken legs like a broken egg beater, he clung to nothing more than the promise of something better replacing the need to feel feel something else within him. He glanced up from his agony and there it was. Not but a quarter of a mile away a sailboat tacked and started toward him. He began to hear shouts from the boat grow in volume - hope had a sound. Yet, despair had a sight as a dull grey fin appeared flowing seamlessly larger and larger in the same trajectory toward him. The shark - for that he was sure of now, moved sinuously; a greyhound in the water compared to the lumbering mastiff of a boat which gasped for speed. He looked up and the welcoming international orange of the golden gate beckoned him back to safety and life. For even emptiness was better than this. For within emptiness there were options; he just hadn’t seen them; he just hadn’t felt them until this very moment. John swam like a motherfucker - he didn’t have a chance in hell but he didn’t care. For cares were for people with time of which John had none. The fin moved toward him as a hand on a clock moves. Closer and closer toward darkness. He had been swimming away his entire life. John that is. From what he wasn’t sure. This shark of life which had chased him; maybe that was it he figured. With resolve, John turned and gritted himself. That thing giving chase surged and bared itself. The ragged and gaping mouth revealing itself to be a soft bottle nose replacing the mirage in his mind. The porpoise glided to his side to buoy him. John’s life might be saved after all as the thing chasing him his entire life revealed itself. This thing which had stalked and hunted him. This thing wanted to save John all along. All John had to do was stop -stop and see it. This thing which would carry him through. John floated to the other side. John was pulled rag doll style from the water by the livid hands of the sailboat’s crew; some crooned, some cussed and others just stared, yet all were in disbelief with the enormity of the situation which had dropped into the placid Sunday afternoon which their lives typically were. John belched and groaned on the foredeck of the Kevlar sailed 50-footer presenting a stark contrast to the bleach clean atmosphere which the captain was trying desperately to reinstate. The captain shouted to the others, “Nothing to see here! This happens quite often. He’ll be OK! The Coast Guard is on their way!” John now felt that he had been safer with the porpoise; safer in the water which had seemed to float and accept him for who he was swapped by a reality now awash in yacht shoes, murmurs and shame. He felt abandoned like a homeless man on the corner for the authorities to pack up and put elsewhere lest he disturb the sanctity of the sterilized sight. Was it not for one, John would have been tempted to drag himself back off of the deck and into the water as her hands cupped the back of his head and she asked, “Where did you come from?” John looked up toward the bridge and intonated that he had come from up there- he had a collapsed lung and it was too difficult to speak at this point and she followed his eyes to the sky responding gently, “You fell from heaven?” This sent John gurgling and gasping wet and pain, his best attempt at a laugh at this point, as she covered him in her coat and yelled for more blankets which the captain begrudgingly handed her. She detly stuffed John’s screaming body in the warmth of the blankets and once the task was through she paused for a moment and smirked, “By the way, I’d like to be the first to welcome you to the good ship 'Second Chance.