Poetry With Me

Drowning. It seems so peculiar when you think about it.

On land, you fill your lungs with air and it helps you fuel your brain, your heart, your body.

But in the ocean the thought of filling your lungs with water is frightening.

The little bit that may seep in to you when you are swimming feels like fire dripping down your insides. Burning you alive with no flame.

You cough and spit and choke on the fragmented water until it finds its way out of you.

But we are made of water. Fresh water. But still water nonetheless.

A drop too much and it floods our system, we require just enough.

No more. No less.

It’s strange that so many of us feel drawn to the sea. Watching the waves hit the beach with a roar isn’t enough we need to feel the waves pushing our bodies away.

the more it pushes us the more we desire to swim out further and further causing each stroke we make to be more and more dangerous.

When we find the calm of the sea we are faced with the weightlessness we carry. How small we are compared to the massive sea that surrounds us.

If it wanted to it could swallow us whole. It could fill our lungs without permission. Instead it calmly sways us back towards the beach. Warning us without words of how dangerous it can be.

The ocean is more mindful than it seems.

Peculiar. Dark. Deep. Cold as it may be. The sea does not ask for you to return to it.

No. It is you swimming towards it even as the waves throw you back in warning. It is you begging the sea like some long lost love, “Return to me.”

But a human and the sea can never truly be.

With love,

GV Rioz