On Drowning
Everything I know about being cruel
I learned from my mother, passed down from her mother.
Her only inheritance, she takes great pride in it
because the world is a cruel and inhospitable place.
I learned from my mother, passed down from her mother,
how to hold inside me a great ocean of sadness
because the world is a cruel and inhospitable place.
At the age of fifteen, I first told her I didn’t want it,
the great ocean of sadness held inside me. She howled
I never saw ugliness to fill an ocean, only a puddle.
I didn’t tell her then, at the age of fifteen, that I wanted
to throw myself off the roof of every building.
That puddle of ugliness, flooded with her ocean, my only
mother. She holds that had she known, had I told her
I wanted to throw myself off the roof of every building,
she would have sprung from her drowning to save me.
I will never know if I held the power to speak her into a mother.
I take great pride only in forging my own inheritance—
to save myself, I must spring forth the strength to drown
everything I know about being cruel.
