Tonightⁱ I² drown³ under⁴ wingless⁵ skies⁶. 

ⁱ How do you know darkness is not just a trick of light? A strange land where quiet drapes like a wedding veil, where I erect a temple and tomb under your name. I have drifted too far and home is a soft reminder on my lips.  

² The self that is writing this poem. I was six when I drowned and the words swam out of me. This is for the self that was left behind in the nursery room, my mother’s womb. I am including all of the girls you never see, biles of vomit in the ocean.  

³ I float upwards. There is lightning underwater that glitters behind my salted eyelids. Death does not sound so bright. The air bubbles grace the tip of my nose, an almost puckered kiss. Almost tastes like oxygen. Almost like saltwater. Like your neck under my tongue. Your hotbed breath. Tastes like thank you. 

⁴ I fly beneath my stomach in search of girlhood. My body shakes from laughter: it has left, it says. Too late. I thought girlhood is a wound that never fades.

⁵ Yesterday I almost touched my wounds, almost too gingerly but I stopped myself. I don’t want to show where it hurts the most. My back where my shadow blades almost kiss, where my name is plain on top of the skin. My name the puncture wound. 

⁶ How do you know light is not just a trick of dark? I pull out a rib, put it under my pillow before I go to sleep. When I enter another world I will be weightless, like my floating lungs, a pair of balloons. The air tastes like salt in here.