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36 MICHELE BATTISTE No Swimming We begin aquatic, gills barely formed then gone before we breach surface, gasping at that alien air. It’s a blessing, to scratch lightly at our necks, not knowing a phantom respiration wants to drown, to return to water and let the waves resuscitate our throats and watch us wave goodbye to bread and steak. It was a form of wishing, when I, at three, almost drowned in the neighbor’s pool, yanked out and gasping, kicking to stay under, somehow knowing womb and death share the same sleep and blessing. Panic also moonlights as a blessing when we swim beyond the breakers, the waves gravid and gently swelling. We know a demon’s beckoning takes many forms and recognition sends us back, gasping for shore, flailing, afraid not of drowning but of our unfathomable urge to drown. It isn’t death we want, but rest, to bless each limb with weightlessness, to gasp at the loss of being’s burden waving in the current as it descends. Then formless in consciousness, our bodies knowing nothing but suspension, we’d suspect nothing exists for reasons other than to drown out the world we were forced into. Forming embryonic shapes in sleep like a blessed infante with no realm claimed, no waving to distant minions, a body grasps its oceanic start—the final gasp strikes the same cosmic chord as the first. “Know this,” the body says, waking, waving its arms as if remembering a drowned doppelganger, “these bones, this skin, a blessing of breath and a nervous foot tap don’t form the end. I’m drowning in you, you’re forming into a wave of air gasped by some god who knows to bless each beginning, but won’t.” ...

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