Remember when
Prediction wasn’t predictive text
It was submersion
Lying still on the bottom of the swimming pool
Blinking upwards at frantic milee of kicking legs
Oh what a noise we humans make
Prediction was the rune you gave me at seventeen
The ink of your influence still in my blood
Riding the ferris wheel in Ireland, watching ourselves convulse
I could smell you on the old letters I kept until last year
I could guess what you’d be doing and what color you began to wear
As things changed for us both, still we stayed tethered
By our invisible dive and the angle of seeing the world
Without air.
There’s a little known secret
in the recess of a soul, put there before birth
find strength from suffering, then appreciate the good days two-fold
and when the time comes for a long hot walk
the road forks
one direction takes you back in a circle
where forever you’ll lament the reunion of your despair
the other road is perseverance, filled with danger
so high it goes, you cannot be sure of air
to breathe, you reinvent gills and return to the source
brine and water, that’s all we ever are.
I know the forked road…”reinventing gills”…perseverance. Powerful, Candice.
This is great.
This is absolutely astounding:
“I could smell you on the old letters I kept until last year
I could guess what you’d be doing and what color you began to wear
As things changed for us both, still we stayed tethered
By our invisible dive and the angle of seeing the world
Without air.”
This is a solid, intensely beautiful poem.
So many forks in our roads
So many divergent paths to choose
Does it lead forward or back?
With no oracle to guide
We choose mostly blind.
Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
TheFeatheredSleep – a poem – memory – choices – returnings – source
Deeply beautiful.
Superb. Sound, insightful, message; marvellous imagery. I’v never peered up from the bottom of a swimming pool, but I imagine the eyes and ears would be assailed as you say. Even your olfactory senses are engaged her.
here
…”find strength from suffering, then appreciate the good days two-fold…”
Those lines shouted out to me, Candice. Another wonderful poem! ❤️
Thank you dear one