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    • Issue 1.5: Hozier-inspired
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    • Issue 4.1
    • Issue 4.2
    • Still Standing
  • Home
  • About/Submissions
  • Masthead
  • Featured Poets Series
    • 3 poems by Chris Prewitt
    • 3 poems by Taylor Byas
    • 3 Poems by David Hanlon
    • 3 poems by Bailey Grey
  • Issues
    • Issue 1
    • Issue 1.5: Hozier-inspired
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 3: Recovery
    • Issue 3.5: Lana Del Rey
    • Special Summer Solstice Prose Issue
    • Issue 4.1
    • Issue 4.2
    • Still Standing
on expectation
 
consider those near-drowned,
wrenched from frozen waters
 
: what is expected of them?
to gasp in one stupendous,
 
ragged breath, then another,
owing nothing but the next.

on reality
 
such waters go unseen
by those with no need
 
for swimming, or frivolities
like square breathing : who
 
have never set their respiration
to a six-seconds-in, six-seconds
 
-out tempo of awareness. they
know not their own flotation,
 
only that they row on : ripe
with boats and oars and life
 
vests, steering a steady course.
in event of an emergency, said
 
vessels propel themselves
to refuge, as if automatic
 
: as if it should have been
automatic : yet your ship
 
wrecked against some coastline
you cannot recall. jagged scraps
 
still drift past now and again :
reminder of all that has come
 
to pass, but here you are : you
have hit bottom and it is deep
 
and it is sharp and it is so cold
you have grown numb as both
 
feet unfeeling tread and tread
and tread and tread and tread
 
and tread and tread and tread
and tread and your last exhale
 
expels as memory and
they call off the rescue

on recovery
 
except now is the wrenching :
necessary and unpleasant and
 
stunningly alive, a shock
to all systems. see, absent
 
of its faculties, the body
thrashes quite like a fish
 
dying on land, except you are
the fish and this part is living.
 
every piece of every nerve or
neuron in your every cortex
 
sings with this instant : save for
maybe a slumbering prefrontal.
 
your limbs stir, independent of
erstwhile impulse or inhibition,
 
kicking toward the sun : rather,
a punched-out place your body
 
made, falling through that dark.
the first gulp of light is too loud
 
and too goldshot to be, yet it is.
fingers cling mindless to the icy
 
edge, drag up hollow bones
with no protest left to offer.
 
you are at the shore : no, not
the one you started on, but a
 
shore nonetheless. life gets
quiet, wringing out attire :
 
you rest for a very long time,
and for a very long time, you
 
do not dare stare into the lake.
here you can see it is just a lake
 
and not the ocean you thought it
was, but you have seen too much
 
of it anyway. winter returns :
it is not how you remember.
 
cold stings softer now, on solid
ground. a once-hard glare gives
 
way to pale aftershine : barely a
nod to its prior bite. everything
 
bears extra reflection off fresh
ice : wet, just starting to form.
 
you test it with a tentative toe
tap, then a prod of the foot. it
 
holds firm. thrill courses through
you at the possibilities : what will
 
this body of water become beyond
itself? a walkway, or a skating rink?
 
you step forward : slowly, but ever
forward. when you roam over that
 
place of such great pain, you do not
spare a gaze. perhaps this is a bridge
 
between happened and happening,
a pedestrian overpass over the past.

Isaura Ren is a poet from the Bay Area. She's got a lot to say. Her work is featured or forthcoming in After the Pause, Neologism Poetry Journal, Electric Moon Magazine, and more. Follow her on Twitter @isaurarenwrites. 
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