catapult magazine

Learning How Not to Breathe

by Alex Joyner

The water’s surface shines like some skin
stretched taut above the deep
Reflecting the sky, the sinewy clouds
and my own anxious face
(I am seeing into a glass not so dimly)
Behind my mirrored eyes
a scaly fin flashes with borrowed sunlight,
and disappears again into the murk of another world

I dive to follow
and feel the warmth of immersion
It is regression
There is no thought, no sound,
no future, no time
It is silent being.
In the womb
there is no need even to breathe.
There we are creatures not yet
of the earth, though entirely embodied

It is the contingency of breath that makes us incarnate
But in the plunge
there is a moment when I forget
to be so careworn and at risk
I am no longer separated
from my origin
I do not stand apart

I swim into my baptism
mindful and mindless
(Knowing as I am fully known)
It is only the grim necessity
of oxygen that calls me back from primordiality
I gasp
as concentric ripples scatter to unknown frontiers
The glass is disturbed

I am still learning how not to breathe