Last summer I was swimming until the cool blue water was running through my veins alike blood that keeps me alive

This summer I'm in a pool of my own tears and to be honest I can't swim

Last summer I was out until the sun said goodnight and the moon came to play, bringing me up into her arms as I was her own

This summer my dog gets out of the house more than I do and it's almost funny because the farthest he can go is the outskirts of the backyard

Last summer I had happiness like I had freckles, sprouted on random days because of sunshine and popsicles

This summer, happiness was a couple minutes of each day that I didn't cry knowing that you weren't in my reach

The skyline is a range of mountains that surround us on all sides they reach about the same height all the way across and resemble a wall.
I am at the bottom of a fish bowl.
Just above that dark structure the sky is a hazy green which transitions into hazy blue as it ascends vertically. Overcrowding the first two layers: long and lazy clouds, they turn from black to grey, to purple then to a bright salmon orange as your eyes follow them sideways— closer to the sun. Above that the sky is blue, lighter, still all clean and unbreathed. Above that pink clouds, stretch their limbs like sleepy housecats, fur splashed purple like bruises and wine stains. The neon mass conceals the rest of the sky until the blue steadies-out, turning nighttime, resting like the ocean from afar.
The moon is a curved grin on the bottom, a perfect crooked smirk from my position here above the murky pool, resting on the fake rock mass— Orange like expired oxygen.
Inside the house Jim tells Wendy to clean the pool. The Cheshire Cat is laughing at me as I look up.
There is one star directly above the moon, their distance apart from each other is the precise length of my forefinger if I hold it up to my eye and close the other. I don't know if it's the North Star, but it's so far the only one bright enough to shine-out through this thick veil of SOCAL fumes and advertisements.
By the time I finish writing this the clouds have turned a sickly brown, then all a smoky grey. The skyline still shines; greener more toxic and honest, like the body of water below me.
The colors all die down, one shade at a time.
Like whoever is editing this picture simply dragged a decisive finger on the brightness setting backward to reveal the darkness. The curtain is now lowered not raised: the contrast cranked to full. Full-dressed I light a cigarette and step off. The water takes me in with open arms and wet kisses.

grains of sand
between two slices of bread
blackberry juice boxes and orange dilute

a gloop of oily sun-block
a scent of petrol, coconut, ice-cream
and nothing but pastel blue

a canary yellow body-board
dropped in above my knees
my mother tugging it along

goading me towards the deep
I cling to it til she snaps it from me
I'm pulled underneath

limbs thrashing, lungs gasping
the shock of being afloat
was how I learned to swim in the Maharees

on sandy Fahamore
under Brandon mountain peak

Depth doesn't scare her.
In fact, it's the one thing she looks for in almost everything.
She was a swimmer, one who floated face-up in deep waters-- in the pool, sea, and metaphorically, life.
Depth to her, was a symbol of freedom and significance.
She wasn't afraid of it or getting lost in it. If she let the tides carry her of their will and to the shore, she knows she wouldn't drown. In the end, she was at home in waters and their uncertain depths. She didn't always need to see the bottom or what is waiting for her. This was life to her.

The same applies to the winds of the night sky, where she was a light cloud with a fleeting presence. She would be here today, and the next moment she would be gone with the wind, swept up in the dark skies above, far off into the deep atmosphere.

All the more has she fallen deep for this certain person in her life, a descendant of Orion.
His eyes were as bright as Betelgeuse and were deeper than the darkest parts of the ocean. ****** into the whirlpools of his eyes, and into the windows of his soul, did she get a glimpse of how he was like.
She would give anything in exchange for a long soak: she was deep in her love for him.

On afternoons she finished her swimming regimen in the sea and headed to the hilltop sports complex before sundown.
There, she watched him shoot arrows with his long bow embraced by his long arms. His deft fingers positioned to hold the arrow in place, and she almost felt her heart stop like the way a criminal froze in surrender before a policeman pointing a gun at him.
Only in her case, he wasn't a policeman nor was she a criminal (unless watching him without him knowing would be considered stalking, therefore an offense), he held a bow, not a gun and that he was not aiming at her.

But the way his slender body heaved with every deep breath spurred a similar memory in her: steady, balanced and clear as the skies above and the waters beneath her body and surf board.
Just before the board and her arms slice through the water's surface tension; just before he releases the arrow which pierces through the light air around him. Staying still for so long to get the perfect posture puts a pressure on one's body. To see him let go with one eye shut for focus was a relieving sight to her.
She knew that familiar tension and expectation that surrounded him.
To her, watching him was like star gazing as always; he was, after all what she called a "descendant of Orion". He was the only thing she saw so bright and clear in that dim archery room and only the sunset casted soft shadows on his face.

She wondered if he would ever find out about the way she felt for him. Every time an arrow slipped through his fingers faster than a time-slip, she felt as if a part of him departed along with it.
Why was it so, she thought, that it seems like I'm loving the impossible; a night dream which won't be carried off and fulfilled by dawn? As if he was a dream too deep in my sea of memories, anchored to the bottom of improbability and unable to rise to the surface to make itself known to him.
A fresh salty breeze filled the air. This happened whenever the winds blew over the waves or when she didn't notice her own tears fall.

His life had a sense of leaving in it. It was either the way his arrows left him and his bow or when he left the sports complex; and in the future, leaves the town and leaves her life. It was more than decided that he was bound to leave the place and head back to the metropolis where he came from.
He belonged to the city of bright lights.
Nothing can ever compare to the way he shines, though, she said to no one but the winds and waves that build up her life.
He was a rocket fueled for takeoff. Ready anytime to leave, to return to the sky, back in the home of the stars.

And she was a mere girl who sought depth in her life:
the water, the sky,
their existence and his eyes.

And it's graduation,
I'm thinking "now or never",
And you look at me
Like this is it,
And you clasp my hand
Like when we were kids,
And my ******* are hard
From the nighttime chill,
And our pasty skin is fluorescent,

We count backward from ten,
And at one we leap off the dock,
Into the icy river,
And I can hear your feet
Propelling you to the thick black surface,
But I stay under
Feeling the water
And the little bits of sand
Floating up around me,

And when I'm ready,
I plant my feet on the ground,
And kick off,
My head finally bobbing under the stars,
And you're already laughing
Like your mind is as far from me as your future,
But I'm ready now,
Because all I can do is move on
and laugh with you

let me cool you down;
take a dip on a hot summer day;
dive in, use my body as you wish;
swallow me from the glass you've got pressed to your mouth;
what a dream, it is;
use me, baby,
take what you need;
invade me

I will learn how to swim.
I will steady my breaths and relax my aching chest,
my hands cupping the water in a loving embrace.
The rough waves will not frighten me away,
I will view them as inviting to splash in.

I will learn how to ease my arms
and kick my legs through powerful torrents,
not stopping even when crashes of blue stake me,
even when the pain runs throbbing through my body.

I will learn how to conquer the storm
and be one with the fish,
unafraid and invincible
through the sharp broken shells,
swimming towards the light of the underneath corals.
I will pass ships with pride and be brave enough to close my eyes,
using the sea as my resting pillow.

I will learn how to swim.
And against the waves I will win.

At first, we saw the waves recede,
Allowing new sand that’s never breathed
Air before, to be kissed by
A sliver of sunshine.
And you stayed, and you laughed
As the waves went back even more
And
Almost when you thought the wave would never break,

It comes,
And scrapes its waves against you
As it carries you along the beach,
Across and over the ****.
And you smile at the boy beneath you,
As you pass over the wall
Attempting but failing to plug the wall up with his finger.

It comes unrelenting
And wave after wave fills
Airways with foam and seaweed, offering  
Aeriolies to that punishing God,
Angry. Salt tearing hair
Away from scalp.
And what was once light, now is
Abnormal, still, opaque in the foam.
Alive in the driftwood,
And broken in the home,
Across the destroyed shops I caught,
A tree limb across my back,
And finally the waves just stripped me
And I let the waves attack.
And I let the waves attack.