A Drowning

She was right, you know,
it is about getting through the time
in between time. That is the hard part.

That is the knife against bone part.
The chipping away at the clock.
Filling the moments late at night
and in early mornings,
through mid afternoon cups of tea.
And pulling, always pulling
apart everything that came before
and everything that isn’t coming yet.

It is a mess of journals,
tattered pages, shaky script
bleeding ink.
It is music, the same songs on repeat.
It is disease and infection,
vomiting and the harpy cry of sirens.
It is flights that will take you far from here.

It is not forgiveness, as they tell you,
it is not what the judges decree,
or the bartender offers
or the lover promises
or the priest can give you.

It is about the waiting,
for the next. For the good small thing.
It is filling in the blank spaces.
biting off all the fingernails
and not thinking about you.
And where you have gone.

It is a cabin in the woods,
stone, cobbled together roughly,
a door like an open mouth,
the wind like a scream past the windows.
It is a home. You see that now.
It is not the place you thought
it was when you were a child
and scared.

You are too grown now.
But still young enough to find the place
And you know how a drowning distorts the body.