Here’s something.
Go back
to your worst day
and bathe in it.

The water
rises,
lifting all boats.
Call it just swell.

Sit in it.
The boat
or the water?
Possibly both.

Or neither.
The thought,
the memory,
boat and water

all. I try
not to
be overwhelmed
by metaphors,

or bath toys.
Even
red, splintered decks.
But here they come.

And I’m left
sitting
among words and
water and wood,

on advice.
Believe that?!
Feeling something
of what I felt

back then, back
when I
was just a kid
who hadn’t drowned.