Body of Water

She used to say, life comes in waves / There are little waves - that you can jump over / You can play with them, harness them, bend them to your will, control them / You can get over these waves, no harm done.

Then there are the big ones / Often without warning, mostly when you can't see them coming / These are the ones that will drown you, if you give them a chance / You can't jump over these ones, you're too tiny, you don't have the height / When you see a big one coming, you hold your ground / Stay still, don't move / Don't hold the pretense of power / Let it wash over you, you will stand intact if you can hold on.

The one that is upon her though / tumorous droplets multiplying unchecked / malignant saltwater burning her from the inside out / mortally lacerating her skin / leaving bloody grooves as her flesh decomposes to sand / closing in on her breath like an assailant’s hand clamping over her mouth / fingers snaking over her throat and slowly squeezing out the air / this giant one drowned her so hard she never took a breath / she never got to teach me about it.

Is this what drinking a wave feels like? This tsunami of brain waves. hi-definition memory dumped into these depths, roiling, churning, turning into toxic saline / Trickling into the corner of my mouth / Waves of nausea hit, I double over and heave into my knees / Death coats the base of my throat: coarse salt, heavy metal, tines of a fork, scratching, scraping / How the tears and the sea taste the same / Waves of everything, nothing, crashing upon a shore / on and on and on till the end of time, or till the barrel touches my temple / Stay still, don't move, she says, holding out her hand.