How To Flow

My mother believed in instruction.

Not the kind printed in manuals,

but the kind delivered

through weather.

That summer she took me to the sea

every afternoon at four,

when the tide pressed its blue weight

against the shore

as if trying to remember something.

“Lie back,” she said,

her hands firm beneath my ribs.

“The water will carry you

if you stop arguing with it.”

I opened my mouth to protest,

and swallowed sky.

Salt tightened my throat.

The sun fractured on the surface.

Her palm did not lift.

Floating, I learned,

is a negotiation with fear.

You must release the need

to measure the depth beneath you.

You must accept that the body

does not belong to itself

when it loosens.

My shoes are still in the hallway where I left them.

I think of her when I feel that old buoyancy—

that moment just before sinking

when the world becomes soundless

and suspended.

She never praised me

for staying above the surface.

She only watched

to see if I would trust

what could drown me.

Years later I have mastered stillness.

I know how to widen my lungs,

how to thin my pulse,

how to lie back

in water that does not love me.

But I have never fully understood

whether survival

is the same thing

as floating.