Playing Dead

When I was younger I trained to be a lifeguard so

I could teach kids to swim and they made us do

a bunch of crazy s**t like carry bricks up from the bottom

and practice rescues on the most beautiful sun-turned

blonde I ever met in my life, my arm crossed across

her breasts and I dragged her to the side, got hard

but the ultimate lesson was the same, when

the water gets too deep, when there’s no help

to be found, you play dead;

They timed me, sixty minutes on an old-fashioned

armed watch that click and clacked as I lay there,

my face in the water, only one kick to get a breath,

maybe every minute I lay there, like a corpse,

like the body I will one day be, my mind open

blank and contemplating all existence

as the second hand moved and moved, and moved;

Now it is the same thing, the waters deep no beautiful

sun-turned blonde with perfect breasts just me

and the water, which is too deep, which is why now

I am pretending to be dead, or at least asleep.