If I am to drown,
I hope to march headfirst
into the sea, disappearing
under the waves in a lure of
golden fish scales,
crushed to the bottom
by bullet-shaped weights.

I want a death by mystery,
to wash ashore one April morning,
bloated & violet, fingernails stained
with yellow seaweed.

I was once rainwater clutched in
the milk-white teeth of a crashing wave,
black storm clouds crackling with
lightning bolts of who I was and
who I could never be.

I wake with seawater in my mouth,
a cruel simulacrum of
living water, staining my lips & neck
in the color of overripe plums.

I am water immobile,
molecules frozen in crystalline figures,
waiting for the warmth of choice, of
knowing that my fate can be more than
dead at twenty-seven to thaw my
aching limbs.