These Hazy Days

A Dark Green Place

You're in a dark green place.
There are pools of black water
Pockmarking the smooth floors.

Some pools aren't any deeper
than your ankles.
But the rare few at the heart
of this jade-made space
host water that enfolds your body
completely, where the thrashing
motions that you make
only create small ripples
which eddy round you in serene silence
as if mocking your panicked state.

Sometimes the pools are deeper than
your head, and it's impossible to
cry for help;
though crying for help, for someone
to hear you, would be
a fully futile endeavor --
there are no windows in this
green room, and the walls
envelop every sound.

Sometimes the pools, if
you dive headfirst into them,
have the decency to take you
to other places for a bit.
In the past you've found yourself
in a canyon held between
the thumbs of polished mountainsides;
in a kitchen down south with
plastic yellow blinds and aloe vera
plants on the sills;
on the rocks of russet riverbanks;
and other times, just
                                           down.

But when at last you surface
from your lovely daydream plunges,
the dark comes crashing all about you,
and you're back in the smooth room
that lacks a single window.
You find you've been
soaked to your very core,
and you're bound around with water
that clings tightly to your skin --
it's silky to the touch,
and terribly cold too,
which every time reminds you
of your girlfriend's dorm room
sheets and curtains,
and the rock your mother rubbed
in labor until it developed divots.

Following these memories are always
the most insatiable longings;
but though you try to flee this place
you've been here for too long
that it's impossible to leave.

And when the morning breaks anew
and fills the room with dark green hues,
every time you awake
with fresh tears on your face.