Woman takes a deep breath
underwater. Sucks in seaweed
like spaghetti and blooms coral
like orchids out her ears. Eagerness,
so many mouths, growls deep
in her belly, hungry hungry.
Hard to live like a single-celled thing
when you’re three shades of aqua and
ochre run together in one limp paintbrush
lying on the plastic pebble bottom.
It’s important to try. Not to get it right
(you’ll never get it right) but to learn
that in your dreams when you’re drowning
water can substitute for oxygen and this
is how to move all right through
all the pools of your waking world:
breathe deep in, never let it out,
hand your lungs over to your gills
and don’t ask where they’re going.
LeighAnna Schesser is the author of Heartland (Anchor & Plume, 2016). Her poems have appeared in publications like Kindred and Rose Red Review. She earned her MFA at North Carolina State University. She lives in south-central Kansas with her husband, two children, half-wild garden, and many overstuffed bookshelves. She blogs at leighannaschesser.wordpress.com.