She looks out over the ocean
And she begins to sink
A crack in her smile
Lets in dark water
You can see the level of it rising behind her eyes
She looks out over the landscape
And she realises she is sinking
Buried in the soil up to her knees
Legs like lead she reaches her fingers
Trying to pull herself up with the sky
But she has already laid down roots
Sinking
A feeling in the stomach
Sinking
To your knees in grief, in shock, in exhaustion
Sinking
In between the sheets
Sinking
Below the tideline
Sinking
I read somewhere recently that a person drowning
Doesn’t look the way it is portrayed in film
It is not noisy, flailing arms and crying help
It is quiet
It looks like treading water
It is a steady intrusion of liquid
Sucked into the lungs by the very nature of their functioning
Arms and legs making the shape of a star
I once knew a man
Who seemed to be built completely out of light
And he gently helped me back to my self
Another time when I was sinking
But before he was twenty-five
He walked into the river
And willed himself to stay below it’s skin
It seemed nobody was able to help him
I look out of the windscreen on the school run
And I realise that I am sinking
The curtain in my brain drops
A dull insistent
Temporary lobotomy.
I wait for the frontal lobe to grow back
Looking up at the sunlight
It’s warmth refracted through the surface
Of the leagues of water above my head
And I wait here in this ocean trench
Friends with the angler fish
Not feeling the snips of their teeth
Until I am lifted by a longed for recovery team
Or at least the air in my own body
Brings me bobbing to the surface
To be carried home by the currents
I surrender.