synchronized

 
the waves of the pool beckoned me
the chlorine soaked my hair & seeped into my skin
i gasp for one breath before going back under
letting myself drown until the final moments
before the carbon dioxide fills my lungs completely
& i inhale the oxygen & it feels like poison
& i just want to stop breathing again

i let the beat of the music align
with the beat of my heart
& i went under again,
squinting as i opened my eyes
to blobs of color

my coaches told me that
everyone wears the same thing so they look the same
& my teammates told me
that i’m the only one they could differentiate
when they were sinking to the bottom of the pool
& i told myself
that i was born to play this sport
when all it did was show me all the ways i was different

i went under water & realized
my skin was on fire
despite the water that surrounded me
& i felt the spaces between
the arms that swiveled as everyone turned & sank
& realized i was on the other end of the pool
so far from everyone else
so far from the blobs of yellow, blue, and white
with my yellow, blue, & brown

i couldn’t understand it
i was too young to realize
why the coaches stopped talking to me
why the team crashed & shattered
until it was me against everyone else
& i look around me now
& there are walls around me
there are pools between me
& the people i’m sitting beside
& the people i’m sitting across
& the people who i’m reading this to
because even if they’re blind to the brown
i’m still coated in a layer of dirt
& i still see the eyes that drill into my flesh
& wonder why it’s the color of—

& no amount of chlorine will bleach it away

& i was at the bottom of the pool again
lungs screaming, arms flailing,
& i wasn’t brown
i was nothing, i was invisible
so i disappeared & let myself float
to the surface & i let my feet
drift into the sky
so far away from the water that i once called home

but i lay in bed
my feet still pointed,
my fingers still drumming to the beat of the music,
& i closed my eyes
& dreamed about the cracks of the world
coming together
& dreamed about
swimming in white paint
until i could swim in the blue again
without wanting to
carve myself out of my skin
because bloody & red is better than—

but when my body finally reached the ocean
it crumbled into salt
because i can’t grip the colored rings anymore
in my weakened fists that once felt
like they held the world
& my feet can’t touch the water
without my mind drowning
in a field of white
& no splotches of brown.

What are you looking for?