Spitting out the hooks in your mouth
is hard, because 1.) they’ve pierced your lips
and not in the fun, fashionable way
but in the way that makes you bleed and pulls
at the wound, tearing, infecting,
and making it hard to talk and
2.) without the hooks, what pulls you out of the water?
The hooks, like some kinds of work, like
some kinds of love,
were actually anchored in the ground all along
tethering your wretched, writhing body underwater
but you didn’t know that.
You didn’t notice that you were drowning.
Where you’re from, you’re nothing if not hooked.
Spitting out the hooks in your mouth
is hard, because it still hurts to speak after –
in fact, it hurts to push up, follow the bubbles of your breath,
and break the surface –
gleaming light blinds you, fills your head,
sounds you’d once forgotten, distance you couldn’t imagine –
and all around you, nothing.
Open water.
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