Aquarium
by Nicole Seah

I am asked how does it feel like,
swimming in your own thick grief?
I tell them the drinks dilute it a little,
I drink to hold my breath.
 
sometimes, half-dreaming, I remember.
Back home, a girl-child
tangled in wriggling coils of snake
kept tame in my bathtub. I remember
my tongue a wet shame in the back of my throat
the way blood darkens when it touches air.
 
They’d wanted to soak me in nitrogen,
To prove I could bloom
I like to think of things like that to feel nothing
 
I tease, I unravel inch-by-inch.
Nails beat themselves on the glass
Hands smear across the barrier like a tongue
curling in my mouth.
They adore me for a while.
 
Change boxes feast on common currency
The steam from their faceless mouths
Imprint shapes on the glass
they don’t blink so there’s more time
to watch bodies morph into dreams.
 
I kept my eyes closed, my skin so translucent
you could hear the water claw into my eyelids.
The water spit me out a halfling,
There is oxygen in the water
There is only me in the water