For D.P.
You are mopping up your mother again
and holding your breath
You are learning how to take a punch
and holding your breath
You are not living up to your potential
You are skipping school again
You are dropping out
and holding your breath
You are broken water 3 times
First for a serious blue-eyed boy coated in apologies who
will understand all of this one day
Then to a school of angry minnows in the shape of a little brown girl
who knows too much
and whose father reminds you how to take a punch
Last to a son with moth-wing eyelashes and a mouth full of light
bulbs whose father is lost in the sofa cushions again
and you are still holding your breath
You go to work when it is dark
and come home when it is dark
and you are holding your breath
The phone is jangling, an aggressive beggar’s cup
The children have eaten the plates and filled the sink with snapping turtles
There is sand in the carpet
The windows are cracking from water pressure
and you are holding your breath
On the night you are pulled over in a swerving car
full to the roof with river water
You wish the officer could see how good you have been
at holding your breath
and holding your breath
and holding your breath
and holding
You are sure that this is the time you will turn blue
That the blood damming in your eyes will burst to hemorrhaging until it is dark
That the seams of your lungs will rip like overstuffed plastic grocery bags when your hands are already full
That you do not have one more push off from bottom left in Your concrete legs
And then, instead,
you sprout gills.