Children hold their breaths to prove
they can go without.
I practice the art of pushing away.
We are doing the same thing.
The space between intimacy
& drowning is closer than we think.
A little water is still an ocean.
Just a small one. Even in your mouth,
or perhaps especially then.
The undercurrent of every wave promises
goodbye. I do not trust a leaving thing
to come back the same
or at all.
To love– to hold the silt of salt water
on your tongue, the violent scrape of tides
dangling in the throat– is to be pillared
with reckless thrashing & call it
a beautiful thing.