Before I met you,
I was underwater,
my feet buried in the sand and
my eyes burning behind blurred curtains of the
salty waves that kept me clawing towards the surface
before crashing into me,
knocking me off of my feet and twisting me about until
I couldn’t tell if I was swimming towards the seafloor or the light of day.
And by the time I peaked above the waves,
gasping for air to soothe my protesting lungs,
they who had tied rocks to my ankles and thrown me overboard
were dragging me back under with phrases such as
“you don’t deserve to be loved”
as if love were air,
and their cruelty was the cold Atlantic waters in which I struggled.
They pulled me back down,
down
down
down
into the abyss, past the crest of an ocean trench,
and when I was seeing dark spots swimming in my vision,
your hand clasped mine and
you led me to the surface,
one hand on my lower back and the other in my hair as
I screamed aloud, water and salt filling my lungs,
engorging them until they could hold no more,
and eventually,
you knelt with me on the beach in the warm dawn rays
and stroked my sodden skin as I vomited
all their vicious terminology and ideals into a seashell to store
for a time when I might be able to reciprocate.
You drew me from the ocean and wound a towel around my shoulders and held me as I quaked in the sand, coughing and spluttering and wheezing.
As surely as you laid me on the beach
you gathered my heart in your hands
and you strung a needle to sew up the waterlogged organ,
all of which you did with a smile and a calming tune of reassurances from your lips,
and no one has ever meant more to me than you do
because when I was drowning, you were my buoy.