In Water<\/p>\n
When I was a child
\nI had a dream that we
\nwere fishing off the
\nrocks near the Queen Mary in
\nLong Beach, where the colorful<\/p>\n
starfish could be pulled
\nup and played with, held to the
\nsunlight,\u00a0 shimmery.
\nglistening\u00a0 in my little
\ngirl hands under the hot day.<\/p>\n
Sitting in the car
\nwith a cheese sandwich and a
\ncandy and a drink,
\nour whole station wagon rolled
\nquickly off the rocks, right there<\/p>\n
sinking under the
\nsurface\u00a0 with me still inside.
\nI swam out the door
\nin the direction\u00a0 of the
\nsurface, the direction\u00a0 of<\/p>\n
the light from above.
\nMy little legs kicked hard to
\nsave myself, and the
\nhalf breath I grabbed just before
\ngoing under was getting<\/p>\n
stale. Chicken fencing
\ncovered the ocean as far
\nas I could see or
\nfeel. Only my fingers broke
\nthrough the holes. Not even my nose<\/p>\n
could make it above
\nthe wrippling water and that
\ndeadly, silent wire.
\nI watched the sun in KY last
\nmoment, wriggling my fingers<\/p>\n
in the air to Mom
\nand Dad screaming on the shore.
\nI let go and filled
\nmy little lunge, crying wet
\ninto wet, tears to ocean.<\/p>\n
I let go of it
\nand in doing so, I woke
\ncoughing and crying
\nand fighting for my last breath
\nfighting for my little life.<\/p>\n
Even then, I knew
\nthis was a message to take
\ninto my life, to
\nremember when the time came…
\nBreathe everything in, and fight.<\/p>\n
That time came yesterday.<\/p>\n
6\/26\/2022
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Water When I was a child I had a dream that we were fishing off the rocks near the Queen Mary in Long Beach, where the colorful starfish could be pulled up and played with, held to the sunlight,\u00a0 shimmery. glistening\u00a0 in my little…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1305,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13,441],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-miscellaneous","category-poetry-prompt-responses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1305"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107242"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107363,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107242\/revisions\/107363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}