Quivering in a clear lake
like I had never seen
before, even though I rested
only an hour from home.
I saw the fish in glass,
suspended by wires I couldn’t see,
didn’t want to-
needed to
maintain the clarity.
And my legs stuck down
in pebbles and wavered like
buoys. The yellow ones
floated yards away in the moss.
And the yellow dock was
slippery in my hands.
I have never liked heights.
Incidents in nine-foot water
led me to become a drowning child
and today I am molding my fate.
Climbing a steel ladder
behind the nicest girl in
New Mexico. She plunges like
a bluegill, and I wander to the edge
my stomach backwards like waves.
I steady the longboard ten feet high
and look into a teal gemstone.
My feet leave anything solid,
I am an astronaut,
and know space in all depths
on the journey down.
Catching all the air
and knowing how dying birds feel.
And instant of falling
a faint memory of rollercoasters
and country hills.
And I touch down with
a sound like no other-
know all I have needed to know.
Every orifice is water,
every space in my body,
want to bury my lungs
in the hanging moment
in the lake, silver shimmers
in the clear.
Surfacing
is such disappointment,
and I gasp like
sepia movie stars.
Know the loneliness of mermaids.
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