Swim

Bryn Evans • June 11, 2025

Chapter Tags: Literary Arts, Philosophy

Frothing and boiling: I recoil
I sense danger—no, anger, it is difficult to read
It seems to seethe, wroth
Teething on the reclusive rock
The surface bubbles, unstable
If I step, how am I to know where I’ll land, what I’ll find?

It is loud, not discordant but constant
The sounds blend arhythmically, abstractly in a relentless flow
My frantic focus, hijacked by each incoming note
Darting from one to the next with a mechanical agility

The colours are sullied, murky
I strain my failing eyes to see
Through the veil of grey, a blue and black tinge
The boiling blanket now pricked by falling pins
Watching, detached
What I know to be my breed
As though I were not fashioned from the very same fabric

From above and below, water
I am held, embraced
Is this not safety?
Yet brain, burdened by battles long past
Racked with unceasing suspicion
Refuses to succumb to kindred comfort
Not embraced, no—surrounded
Captive to this body speaking in erratic tongues

If meaning is here, it is not found in recurrent images, patterned melody
The to and fro, each time seeming faintly familiar, familial
Is similar, but never identical
I try to latch onto recognized shapes
Yet the deviant mirage once again shifts
Its outline always altered: foreign, disorienting

I stand in these strange senses
Senses I could not make sense of given years
Each moment growing more drenched
Tiny beads on my hair, skin:
Sequins sewn onto the growing blanket
This language is not spoken through sight or sound
Nor subject to rules of grammar
It will be mastered through experience, not study
Understood only in the unbound intimacy of kin

I dive in
My physical form suddenly spilling away
Embraced or surrounded
I am beginning to learn