Undertow (III)

And still

I am not afraid

I have swallowed

Darker things, than this

I have carried absence

The undertow is not cruel

It is exact

It strips me

Not of love, but of illusion

What remains

Is something harder

Something luminous in its fracture

A pulse that does not ask to be held

A body that does not confuse

Touch with arrival

If you reach for me now

You will not find the me that floated toward you

Like an offering

You will find depth

You will find pressure

You will find a silence

And still

There is heat here

Strange

Feral

Uncharted

The kind that burns

Without flame

The kind that lives

In the center of a woman

Who has learned

How to disappear

Without ever leaving

I am no longer asking to be saved

I am becoming the thing

That survives the drowning