By: A. J. Frantz
To be near you is to breathe. Not in the way that it is vital and effortless— though it is those
things, as well—
but because I often find myself suspended at sea, paddling up through dense layers of ocean to
catch each fleeting breath.
I spent many months drowning, feeling my lungs fill with cold water,
diaphragm flattening into my stomach as my body began to burst at its seams. Sunlight
reached these depths only in pale tendrils, disbelieved signals of the world above, but I
kicked, anyways, and blinked away the burning as I clawed at the stomach of each wave.
I clawed, and then there was the surface, and the sky above it,
impossibly vast as I sputtered the salt water from my chest and felt the breeze race by me.
Everything was very still, my head bobbing on this sea of green glass
before the next wave hit, and I was pulled back under like a lifeless doll
I never minded the ocean floor before I felt the sun upon my skin
and heard gulls cawing above as air entered my lungs and circled through my veins. To be with
you is to breathe, and my limbs will push me against each current, persisting for each respiration
and finding a way to float until my lifeboat appears on the horizon.
A. J. Frantz is from Detroit, MI and currently studies urban sustainability at Oberlin College. Their work has appeared in Touchstone, The Utican, and more.