From a Photo
I couldn't tell if he was swimming or drowning, thrashing or resigned. The arm that popped out of the water at a strange angle was pink and slick with water - looked more like it belonged to a chicken or a foetus. His hair glued to his forehead by the wet into a ceaser cut. Lips pursed and cheeks puffed like he was in the middle of spitting out water. Eyes closed, consciousness questionable.
Brown and white are the most beautiful together; the waves are chocolatey and the foam froths creamy into peaks - I’d like to paint it. But instead the photo goes on my tumblr. Material scrapbooking - it’s inherent health and effort - is dead, and so are the fish.
There's liquid tar in lake michigan and i can't go back there but I will. Marriages are getting revoked and race is real. Detroit is being artificially revived with high-rises.
The lake was the only place I could be in and feel inconsequential in a good way - lifted/cradled/rocked by the tide. We never think the slow demise of this world will reach our own lives but then it does. You think that ambiguous ethnicity is the best of both worlds and you could be content with invisibility. You think for a long time that your sexuality is uncomplicated and laws don't affect you but then you grow and everything is larger than you and you are crushed by manic tenderness towards a theoretical life dreamed for you long ago.
In my fondest memory, I sit with my legs splayed out in front of me at the spot on the shore where the tide rushes in. It’s force knocks me back with a satisfying pressure every twelve seconds and for twenty minutes, the water and I are conjugally intertwined.
But now I’m back inside of myself and the water is poison and you tasted marriage for a moment and bourgie public radio informs you that there are no Black musicians in the top 100.
"There's not enough time for anything and nothing works out" i said, just to say it.
