AWARDED THIRD PLACE IN THE PHILIP PYKE MEMORIAL PRIZE 2025
It must have been around four in the morning, the peak of the summer heatwave, mid-July of some years passed. The sheets I lay on were old and fraying, pilling where my feet rested, tickling the fat of my calves. I was waiting for my phone to ping with messages. The smoke alarm cried out in the intervals and when it fell silent I lay awake anticipating the moments when it would speak again. I can’t recall whether or not I had fallen asleep at all that night but, at some point, I left my bedroom and descended to the kitchen to fill a glass with water. In the short time it took for the ice to melt, a phrase fluttered into my mind and flew around until it had nowhere left to go except onto paper. Indeed, there are fewer joys than water to drink.
Recently, a friend of mine asked about my favourite body of water. It was one-third of some kind of pseudopsychological questionnaire regarding relationships and personality types. For the final question, my answer was elaborate. I love lakes. This particular one, a short bike ride from my house, used to have a bench hidden amongst the trees, where I have spent many mornings writing, reading, yearning, ruminating and rubbing my shoulders up and down to keep warm. That bench is gone now. I’ll have to find a new place to do all those things. But lakes are my favourite body of water for a myriad of reasons. As I told this friend of mine, I find it comforting that, although relatively small and contained, within it exists an entire ecosystem. It is vast to microbiome, to organisms, to the life inside of it and yet I can walk its entire perimeter if I decided to. Though, I must warn you, along the way, your thoughts become tangled in its microcosmic qualities. It’s humbling. A reminder that there is always something larger, something greater. Eventually, the lake will fill with sediment and cease to exist. All life is temporary, even if it feels everlasting.
In my own short, uneventful lifetime, most of the lakes I’ve come across were enclosed in woodlands, which leads to my second reason. I explained, for my answer, how I appreciate the romance of it. It provides a richness that other bodies of water, mostly, cannot. A lake surrounded by trees offers several views to cherish, various beauties to savour. You might admire the speckled sunlight that dapples from the open canopies, the boundless variegated sea of green, the howling song of the wind, the conversation of birds, the complete and explicit absence of urban life. All of this within a large open space. It inspires a stillness. You want to replicate the water. To become it. To only ripple and undulate, nothing else. To be ignorant to the passage of time. To reflect only the blue of the skies above, to be full just like it, slow just like it. To replenish oneself — water falls from the clouds above to fill the basin, rivers tend to flow inward manipulating the volume. All water needs is water. It is a source of sustenance for itself, for us and for all. You might realise, as your eyes trace the baby waves, follow the minor currents — a soft guidance rather than a force — that if all water needs is water then all you might need is yourself.
By the end of it, I could tell my answer had surprised her. She said that she’s never heard such fully
developed thoughts on the matter. Taking with it my responses for 1. Favourite Colour and 2. Favourite Animal, her assessment was that I was someone made to love. That conversation came just before the new year. It struck a chord and has stayed with me until now. I think about it and somehow I am transported to that midsummer night, four in the morning, hot, itchy, persevering through a desperate thirst. Perhaps it’s because the question was never really about bodies of water. Maybe, it’s actually about the real thing that had kept me up that night — connection. What is your favourite body of water is really a question of what you love, what brings you peace, what you would want to carry with you into the future—it’s an invitation to examine how deeply you understand your own feelings. For me, that midsummer night, the answer would have been a connection I had with someone. It still is. But her assessment that I was “made to love” felt rather affirming. It made me wonder how often I have overlooked the very things that nourish me, the quiet, subtle ways I have been fed by the world. I likely do every day, except for that night… where I took the time out to acknowledge that there are fewer joys [greater] than water to drink.
