up that fast

First published in The Ekphrastic Review, May 2020

After Martina Amati’s Under, a film-installation artwork, 2015

She whispers, you don’t come up that fast, in this inky room. I don’t. He didn’t. She won’t. She lingers down there in her blue immensity, chips away at the Ouroboros of her trip like a flying fish. Why are flying and drowning the same down here? A halo crowns her hair with air. Why are you breathing so loud? It signals she’s coming up, tied to her cord with two toes in this amniotic light that closes around us. A school bites like spurs in socks. Pick them out. This cord so fragile I could cut it with a finger.