What Is Not Drowning

Glass walls folding.
This still seeing
the things descended without.

To gather silence with the lungs,
filling the body with force not its own.

The act of drowning is simple,
breaks the mind into what it could have,
what it could have thought itself into thinking.

A face overhead is gravitational,
eyes luminescent, mouth more red than
the first time

above wore a mask, the generic pagan kind.
[Death has no shroud]
It wears rain, body slides past.

You are sinking: the getting closer to
anything but ascension; whatever
the case concludes

cannot live without shoulders, then forgets
The surface is every layer sloughed from the throat.
[Death has no mind] We must not forget

drowning is birthed without
that abrupt dryness. Love is
fluid seeming so large and

buried is not such a mystery,
fiery eclipse and choke.

It is saying I want to become
for you: I want to shed my skin,
be born into your words. The last act.

Descent loses simply
what the body can be without,
white shading the surface.

Tanja Sofia Krupa