Swim
Swim down
Swim as far into the plum-thick dark
as your lungs will let you
Your limbs grow long and heavy
Summer boils the ocean’s face with a kiss
and you are writhing with pleasure
deep within the brine and undertow
Swim
and let a scream escape you
Watch all the lovers you’ve ever known
rise toward the light above
held in their spheres of hot breath gone cold
Swim
Swim down
until your skin chafes against the sand
and kelp and living things that go unnamed
Push your fingers
into what has always been
dreaming along the seafloor
what welcomes you
like a man’s warm mouth coiling around
your innocence
Swim
Swim and forget who you were moments ago
when the salted breeze lashed your skin
Swim and wait until your lungs
ache with impatience
with fear
with remembering
how it felt to be something hot-blooded and hungry for more
Swim and die a thousand deaths
Swim and forget the men whose arms could not hold you forever
whose tongues could not carry your name into morning
Swim
knowing you must surface
But when you do
the tide will deliver you home
Swim and see how you make new worlds
ready to devour the shore
Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and coffee devotee from New York. His work has recently appeared in Passengers Press, Sky Island Journal, The Banyan Review, Hive Avenue, and Last Leaves Magazine, among others. You can find him on Twitter/Instagram at @dannyjbrennan.