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Rationale

If you think it's the will of water,
you're wrong.
From where you stand watching on shore,
dry and smug,
I appear to be subject
to undertows,
balsam on the tide.

Can't you see that it's sexual?
-- unfolding gracefully,
skulking, both,
as I sink beneath the waterline, entering
impossibly easily,
like a newborn?

I may disappear for hours,
brain humming like a factory,
its long hallways filling with gleam,
like the mouths of the drowning
fill with water
as they cry something that from shore sounds like
help,
though it might be
more.

And I may disappear for hours,
strands of cells opening like the legs
of a beautiful girl, opening,
then muscling closed, sustaining the weight
of a darkening sky, swirling like dark
water around our heads,
while legs of the bright swimmers open
and scissor closed,
keeping them afloat.


Cesca Janece Waterfield