Splash of Panic

The ones who would soak the mother who drowned her children in serpentine seas never floated a child. When splashed amongst the horror-stricken, we too feign revulsion. Evoke higher powers and baptismal pools: the fluidity in the womb. The commingled bond. But single us out, and buoys snare our feet as we swim for shore. Weighted down and engulfed with load in tow – bondage. Admit it! Not a one hasn’t considered suffocating that incessant whining beneath the softness of a comforting wave or lifejacket – has not wished we could hurl the wailing one at a shoreline just to make it Stop. That shrill that turns all heads at a pool party where somehow every 4-year-old but yours is peacefully partaking in cake – But yours must splash the dry. Or don another’s pink towel. Or dive off the high board. Just five more minutes. Drown. This is not a topic a mother can bring up casually over coffee. Too fierce for me, possibility bobs to the surface. Since the time her sucking rubbed my areolas raw, we’ve had our moments – times when I could’ve river rafted her perhaps reclaiming her upon maturity. I need alone time, I explain inexplicably to the baby blues locked on with innocent revulsion. I have drowned her out with work, and she notes the behavior – will avert her own children’s guilt- provoking glare when she demands alone time. Craves it. Even as I type, the whine is still there, abutting my every keystroke, pushing my buttons until I wish to gurgle deep and low, like a wave that comes up crashing then subsumed by the next and next until their edges blur. Toni got the blues. Allowed herself the chance to drown one out in fiction. She was a mother after all. Right now, a single drop at the surface might take hold and pull me under. Please abandon this line before you immerse your baby for a poem. Coach shouts out: Slow your stroke and focus on form… and try to remember: breathe. But despite that advice, I gurgle like she did. And then I remember to love.