I went swimming in the ocean
Formless, fleshless
Fish to the fish
Rock to the rocks
Water to water
My fetal heartbeat the drum of the world
That swam in webs of invisible threads
Moving like seaweed through earth's long history
I was back in the body of my mother.
I knew all and understood nothing.
I moved with the tremor of rotations
Slipping through wet boundaries that could not
contain the magnitude of my fiery fins.
My lungs breathed mountains to life
My sweat made oceans manifest
My lips blew languages across deserts
Growing
Encompassing
Until I was too large to contain the earth.
I shrunk to a raft.
Left without maps or measurings
I forgot whether it was water or air
I should breathe into my lungs.
And when I was most small
And most pregnant with all possibilities
I went swimming in the ocean with death itself
Slept cold for a time on a slab of raft
Drifting towards another Avalon
Where I birthed myself again
In a dark and strange land
Without waves or fins
Or even wings
To lift me up
Towards something
More.