I think about the way the body

drowns in denial of air,

the way the body’s buoyancy overcomes

—displaces—just long enough,

long enough to sink and rise and sink

and rise,

then sink into ‘chaos, dark and rude’,

into a canyon of salt and water, or maybe

milk (solids, if weaned) and loneliness.

I think about the way the body insists on verticality,

as if it could grow legs however long enough

to hold its mouth above the surface.

I think about how silent it is,

that mouth, that body,

drowning,

the mother

drowning,

when a self-assured scream (for help) would do,

or perhaps a meditation, “remain calm” and then maybe

the body would just turn horizontal like a corpse, or something less morbid,

a fish, let’s say, though not a shark

compelled to wander in mundane agitation,

mouth agape,

a kind of drowning in motion.

I think about the way your Body survives;

how it's given peace for ‘wild confusion’:

The sweat on the sleeping baby’s brow;

his delighted, percussive palms;

a familiar sound renaming you;

a bright squeal–the brightest—

a little body treading air, finding his legs,

a breathing, babbling buoy, reminding you how to float.

And if you can not remember,

then there are the guards who watch, ready

the moment you forget how to swim.

Erikka Durdle is a writer and editor. She is a graduate of Southern New Hampshire University’s Mountainview MFA and was the recipient of the program’s Safford Book Prize for best fiction thesis and the Lynn Safford Memorial Prize. She lives in Maryland.