Today's poem is by Brynn Saito

Days I Can't Feel You
        after Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I dive my body into the deep end, pluck golden leaves
        from the silty bottom, nearly drown.

I push my body against concrete, surrender
        to ribboning light, grow rapturous

in the gravity of quiet. Days I can't see you
        I continue my study of beaked whales

and pink dolphins—mystery species
        who survive by going stealth, unsurveilled

by the terror. Away from the carnival
        of recognition, I could be the moon.

I could mother myself by swimming circles
        around an absence until it speaks.

Whatever in me might nourish you
        mends itself in the undrowned part of the planet

that navigates by the depths of untraceable tongues.
        Days I can't feel you I let myself feel you.

I study the blueprints of bioluminescence
        in underwater caves. You do not dim.

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Copyright © 2023 Brynn Saito All rights reserved
from Under a Future Sky
Red Hen Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission