Drowning

It feels like drowning,
thrown suddenly into the middle of raging water,
death-run rapids, a hurricane whirlpool,
and the mind just keeps going round and round
circles, back in upon itself,
coming to the same end again and again,
but never out, never clear,
never clawing the way up to where there’s air
and light and familiar space,
where it isn’t such an effort just to keep existing,
where things make sense still
and there isn’t a torrent of tears
pouring themselves into the empty hole inside
that threatens each second to drag everything back under
and suffocate it, slowly killing.

Drowning, dying, a bit more each day.
Swimming, saving self? If it was clear which way is up,
which way is out. But the sky is the same as the storm,
all dark, all directions, and the lifeguard has given up
his post for more important things inside his head.

Sinking, mind and body scoured away by time and life.
If he ever thinks to come back, what would be left?
Weighted, empty bones, half-buried in sand, slimed over with seaweed,
a mile beneath the endless waves.