In the Water

Left in the water with

history’s colossal, sharp teeth,

wading, wading,

waiting, waiting,

watching for boats

praying that they’ll save me.

Washed up wreckages,

there’s no rewind,

the body of that pilot

mirrored my pale image.

I was seduced by whatever was unattainable

at the time,

possessive, distant and oblique.

Deserted on an island,

supposedly finally free

but Rousseau was right all along,

there’s always a finder’s fee.

Left in the water,

wading,

waiting,

to find me

tangled up in the blackness

of the nighttime’s sea

I wake up screeching

each time my body tries to sleep

plagued by images and visions

of the terrors I let sink deep,

way too busy to watch the world end,

regurgitated into sand,

lives burned rather than spent.