Refractory

“The instinctive drowning response is the final set of autonomic reactions in the 20 – 60 seconds before sinking underwater, and to the untrained eye can look similar to calm safe behavior.”
let’s start this way
below the surface tangled in mud
choked
by grasses thick as braids it’s so dark
shh it’s just the rot of the river let it suck in
your toes do you feel how your fingers are nice
and cool there are snakes
in nests they are as natural
and constant as the current
turning blue: to lack air then to die
the color: it started
before Maggie Nelson was even a name
I knew but hey now
I have a kindred spirit in California
when I became a human I was
twenty-something or nineteen
I lay in a bed on a carpet I sat in a chair
at a bar I nursed a beer they say
I took care of it like a child because it was all
I had in my hands or my gut my fingers were cold
stagnant: both life and the water and the life in the water
that water is so blue we say but it’s not
it’s just the reflection of the light in the sky
let out by what’s underneath
a dangerous misconception
what I wanted had blue eyes
and a song
between her legs and I wanted to hum it
to braid her hair
thoughts that needed
bending and boundaries
enter boys enter snakes
to fill me up with secrets when I spread
my legs I turned my head to the side
I pictured holding her hand
the water was clear as it filled my eyes
my lungs were heavy nests
later I stared into someone else’s
got lost
turned blue
in the surf of them
a tomb of blue or green or brown
a hand above water
count the fingers
the color of bruises