Futility

I am a salmon. I am swimming against the current, going nowhere, fighting a path upstream to some unknowable goal, for some intangible reason. At the moment I am stuck beneath a weir; some man-made bullshit designed to keep my nose pressed down against the slimy bottom of the river. I can't find a way up.

My body is filling with cortisol. Whenever I get wherever I am going, I will die.