What it costs

Now it costs to say

I will survive, now when

my words coat my clenched

teeth with blood, now

when I have been yanked

off love like a diver

whose hose is cut.

I push against

the dizzying onslaught

of heavy dark water.

Up or down? While

the heart kicks

like a strangled rabbit

and the lungs buckle

like poor balloons:

I will survive.

I will lift the leaden

coffin lid of the surface

and thrust my face

into the air.

I will feel the sun's

rough tongue on my face.

Then I'll start swimming

toward the coast

that must somewhere

blur the horizon

with wheeling birds.