LUCY HOLLAND
Second Prize - 2019 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Underwater'
Learning to swim
after Yusra Mardini
i.
Damascus behind us.
Your hand of clay in mine.
We embroider each inhale
to the surface, set our bodies
to the rhythm of breath:
each rise and fall, following the arc
of your mother’s voice in song.
ii.
You teach my limbs stillness first.
How to flatten my back to the face
of the water, and be carried,
as if asleep, to the lip of the beach,
how to hold the coiled blue
we would build you from.
The sea peels herself green here,
mouths aloud the hunger
copied out on your hands.
iii.
A breath, and we sink under,
each eye stinging as it is unstitched,
pulled backwards by the seams
in the heaviness of underwater silence:
a quiet like a house
that has not been slept in,
or a child, listening on the stairs.
iv.
Held between each wave,
I think of the story you loved,
about the girl who swam
for a hundred days on a single breath.
Months later, in a country that is not ours,
I will watch you write it blind in sleep,
trace its letters with inkless thumbs.
Eyelids taut, sticky with salt.
You will dream of a burning city,
and in the dark your legs
will draw infinite commas, tread water
as they move in unfamiliar sheets.