my mother says everyone has to learn how to swim

Karo Ska

my mother says everyone has to learn how to swim

but i can’t float. i fear the water won’t hold me. no one else has. i fear risks, except when i’m intoxicated. then i’m impulsive in re-living my trauma, kissing strange boys, pressing them up against walls, riding their cocks with my crotch, until they’re gasping for breath.

i lost my first kiss to a man in his 60s. his tongue teaching me lessons i wasn’t ready to learn. i kissed a boy my own age when i was thirteen, his mouth tasted the same, like day-old cigarettes & cheap cologne. i drowned in his mouth,

remembering my inability to float. if i were to define my own desire, i’d have to confront memories i can’t

recall. their fuzzy imprint leaves me gasping in the middle of the pool, arms floundering to keep me above the water, my mouth like a fish’s when it jumps out of its bowl. trauma is

an ocean i can’t swim in without losing my will

to breathe, an ocean where i don’t have limbs that can carry me across the rip currents of life.

in my mind, i close a door, so i forget & can sometimes feel normal. what is normal when you’re drowning in a grave of your own bones? my mother says i have to learn how to swim, but she never taught me how to float.