[Issue 2020.52]

‘Drown Me’, Hester J. Rook

Illustration © 2020 Carmen Moran

Drown me.
Fill every secret part of me with water.
Let the waves surge over my skin, caress
in that foam-tossed way that prickles and pulls and shivers.
Drag me under.
Fill my mouth with salt until I’m
gagging.
Bind my wrists with kelp.
Anchor me to the seafloor and
soak me.
I want the tides to roll over me like trains
catch my hair so it streams, an alien crown
my limbs pinwheeled and vulnerable to the ocean
deeply, offered up.
Spread me and dissolve me under the weight of water, the heaviness of salt.
Kiss me with brine and oyster shells and memories of the sun, tug at my blue lips.
I have made space for you, down to the gaps between my arched teeth, among the circles of sand gripped between my fingertips.
Let the ocean enter, to places touched only by sky.
Let the currents slide across my skin and seek.
Let my eyes fill with translucent green and abyssal black, stars behind my vision and whales overhead.
And then,
when the ocean is finished with me,
fling me onto the sand in a fracture of light
and watch me gasp
forbidden air.

© 2020 Hester J. Rook

[Issue 2020.52]

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