My daughter’s learning how to swim
But I’m the one who’s drowning,
Face down in an endless sea
While my babies lie in an empty bath;
I think your blackened mind must’ve
Emptied your heart,
So that when you gazed
Into the mouths of screaming babes,
And saw my name written in fear
Cascading from their frozen throats
You could break off a horn from your head
And pray that the holes it left
In my children’s chests
Would release the demons in yours
When they bled.
You cut me open too that day
And doused my heart in flammable despair
Set alight by my fiercest love,
And I know this love and this despair
Will burn entwined beneath my bones
Until all of me is ashes,
Or a million tears can quell the flames.
But how do I tell the little girl
Who’s still learning how to stay afloat
That there’s no ocean deeper than grief,
And no current stronger than fear?
How do I tell this lonely star
That her constellation’s lost in space
And she’ll spend her life being dwarfed
By the crimson shadow of her siblings’ blood?
I see them in her face.
I feel them in my arms that are almost broken from holding so much sorrow.
I remember a time they floated blissful within me,
Like teardrops waiting to fall
Into a black ocean.
Now whenever I cry for them I save the tears
To construct a melancholy sea,
So that maybe one day I can hold my ragged breath,
And dive to the bottom
To see my babies on the sandy floor,
Or maybe my little girl
Will lay me on my back on the mirrored brine,
And teach me how to float.