Sitting still, this is how I am. Just a little bit drunk on fear.
Sitting on the plank. Legs dangling. Ship heaves up and down,
I swing up and down, holding on, trying to trick myself into the sense
that this is a kind of stability. I say to myself, “I’m on the plank,
off the ship, looking down.” But where I really am is over a very
wet abyss—a universe unbreathably foreign, full of seemingly familiar
monsters. Just dangling. Nothing to keep me out but the grip of my thighs and
my relatively small hands. And the ocean whispers deceptively, “This is where
you belong.” And there is that always suicidal pull, “Yes—embrace me.
Press around me and show me every dark, silent strangeness.”

The ocean is the more real. It holds all those thoughts for which I ache,
holds all that I am missing in /my /self most ancient. And
in there /you turn around and /see me for real.

No. That’s not it. It’s something else entirely.

Something deep down there.