lungs burn,
legs ache,
you know you need to breach
and yet
you linger,
pause;
anticipate
the veil within your reach.

it's not your turn
but here you are,
again
so deep beneath the world
alas,
the dizzy heights
of waters dark
expell you to the shore.

handfuls of hair,
toungues,
teeth.
the curving air;
alive
in rooms
with hanging doors.
we feast.

our rolling eyes,
shaking lips,
hips.
tremble
under fingertips,
taste the heat
and melt.

we press.
wasting no time
for breath.
it happens.
it happens.
it happens!

inhale
before you go
beneath, so that you might
not run out of your life - don't fade
away.

mermaid purses,
vales of kelp,
swinging skyward with the swell

of nautic rhythms
- submarine -
with incandescent, algal green.

in underworlds,
cathedrals blue,
we waltz in coral halls anew,

adorned in silks
of woven foam:
forgotten cold Atlantic home.

nothing scares me more than me.
it isn't fair,
it aches to be
so full of rancid misery;
twisted psychologically
by tempered hate
- a level stare -
emotion shreds that crackling coat
of grinning, laughing make-believe,
retouched,
refinished,
polished fine
by damaged days in infancy.
I want to love;
I long to breathe
and bare it all,
******* the need to look so in control.
please,
how long until I break, you think?
how long until they see?
those sorrows buried underneath.
nothing scares me more than me.

and nothing
- no -
can touch you here.
you need to know;
you want to hear.
lagoons of time
- pearlescent-
in all directions;
omnipresent.
we waste our tastes
in saline haste to swallow
something more than hate;
to anchor all,
to simulate;
the weight of tears
against the odds
of breath and flesh.
that safety net
defies the length of sentiment,
and even yet...
you hold yourself in present tense
to sweat,
resent,
repent.
and so,
you starve and fret.
in the dead of night
you petrify,
resist the air that rents
and gasp:
what was that?

all that you are;

is all that you?

this is all that,

and that is all.