2019 2nd Place Winner - Lucy Holland, 'Learning to swim'

LUCY HOLLAND

Second Prize - 2019 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Underwater'

Learning to swim

after Yusra Mardini

i.

Damascus behind us.

Your hand of clay in mine.

We embroider each inhale

to the surface, set our bodies

to the rhythm of breath:

each rise and fall, following the arc

of your mother’s voice in song.

ii.

You teach my limbs stillness first.

How to flatten my back to the face

of the water, and be carried,

as if asleep, to the lip of the beach,

how to hold the coiled blue

we would build you from.

The sea peels herself green here,

mouths aloud the hunger

copied out on your hands.

iii.

A breath, and we sink under,

each eye stinging as it is unstitched,

pulled backwards by the seams

in the heaviness of underwater silence:

a quiet like a house

that has not been slept in,

or a child, listening on the stairs.

iv.

Held between each wave,

I think of the story you loved,

about the girl who swam

for a hundred days on a single breath.

Months later, in a country that is not ours,

I will watch you write it blind in sleep,

trace its letters with inkless thumbs.

Eyelids taut, sticky with salt.

You will dream of a burning city,

and in the dark your legs

will draw infinite commas, tread water

as they move in unfamiliar sheets.