Submarine
by Kevin Gu
I keep going down. Something in
the ears agree with pressure, revising
what they want—leans sideways,
goes blue, quits. These small bones
familiarize themselves, they have always
been good students.
Always willing to learn the deep
language, and I have learned
to move without disturbing the water
-grass and silt at the abyss floor. There is
a discipline to this. My father taught it:
how to carry the dark thing gently,
how not to let it cloud the water.
He carried his father the same
way, through every bare room,
through every ordinary afternoon.
Even with the oolong going cold,
a door left open to the sparrows
who do not know what grief is,
but still sing it perfectly on white
noise mornings. Learned it
from my father who learned it
from his father. Worn down
the generations like a good coat.
The fish down here are mostly mouth.
I do not blame them.
I too have been hungry
in the wrong direction—
I too have pressed my stomachache
against the hull of what I wanted,
gone metal, gone listening
waiting for the small give
that mutters: yes, you were real,
yes, it happened to you.
Even if, the moment
when you surface and the world
is still doing its thing—
pigeons indifferent as weather,
the neighbors leashing their dog,
its lost ball resting in the street.
The whole world continuing
regardless.
I came up through all that water.
No one noticed.
Sometimes I think I am a house.
The sea has been filling me
thoroughly since I knew there
was something deeper than grass.
Every door you open—more.
Every room you empty—more.
I have stopped calling it depth
and started calling it
what it is which is also
what it has always been
which is also me—
a current moving through
the body in meandering
dark matter. So I press
my hand to the porthole
glass. On the other side:
an open world lit
brilliantly, going on,
breathing without effort,
the living do—
and it is so beautiful, this
life I’m watching from
below, that I almost forget
some days,
I am the one
still here.