Underwater

Once when I was working as a swim coach I came down with the worst headache I’ve ever had in my young life. I thought about this headache as I read Michael Lee’s The Only Worlds We Know recently, and it just dawned on me why. 

The night of the horrid headache I had two more practices to get through before I could crash into my bed. I had spent the first couple of hours dry, on the deck, just yelling into the water and slapping little hands that reached up and asked for validation on how fast they just kicked their feet. I always wore a swimsuit while coaching so I could jump in at a second’s notice, but I had no plans on going in. I was coaching in the winter and snow was falling outside and through the windows of the natatorium the evening sky got dark. Even the kids didn’t want to get in the water that day. 

After a group of kids exited the pool and before a new group splashed in, all the guards and coaches sat in the guard office and talked about how much they wanted to go home. As the knife behind my right eye began to twist itself into the depths of my brain, I announced to the guard office that I was going in. Deciding to jump in the pool without being asked by a supervisor or to save a child was unheard of, especially in winter. 

My head hurt so much that I guessed the only solution to be one of submersion. So, I jumped, not so gracefully, into the chilly water and just got underneath it. I swam like a child, kicking my feet like a mermaid and floating on my back. 

Sometimes, when I’m underwater I forget I’m alive because of the quiet, but I’m always quickly reminded that I am in fact, mortal. 

When I came up for air, another coach asked if I felt better, and of course, I said “yes.” She and most of the other guards were quick to agree that being in water is the cure for just about anything wrong with your equilibrium, both physical and spiritual. Water just seems to quiet you in a rare way, almost as if it’s a swaddle. 

All that being said, I’m not a swimmer. I can swim, I love to swim, I crave swimming, yet not once did I have the will to be a swimmer. I swim on my own terms. 

When I got to college, all the other English majors had a deep passion for writing poetry, and I felt like I was in a room full of swimmers. 

Just as I am with water, I am with poetry. I can write poetry, I love poetry, I crave writing poetry, yet not once did I feel the need to be a poet. When I lace words together in prose I can feel certain that people are hearing me, and that’s what often drives me to write in the first place, sharing specific universal truths that click in the depths of readers minds. When I write poetry, I feel like a middle schooler at a dinner party trying to assert their voice amid the entrée course. 

Poetry, however, is my water. I had reached for Michael Lee when I felt like walking on the world while it was upside down. Taking it off the shelf was the pronouncement that I needed to jump in the pool. While ambiguity in my own words stresses me out, the adventure of poetry with the right guide is clarifying, and it is fuel. 

When my bones don’t feel right, when my head is full of heavy clouds, when I’m angry, when I feel the need to be loud but have to be quiet, when I cannot make words play together nicely, I read poetry. I submerge myself in the depth and let it quiet me.