Swimming Pool Amnesia, by Sarah Parmet
when i fell six feet out
of the air, i landed in the hotel swimming pool.
it erased my memories, charcoal smoke
painting over a dry canvas of bone,
films clinging to my eyes — crystalline
cataracts, my amnesia stroking
the deep end with crooked fingers,
fingers and toes wrinkling like dry
prunes from plastic boxes
in summertime, longing to rip through
the cobweb barrier between
water and fluorescent light,
fiberglass warping the voices,
just another old record player singing
broken
melodies or faded cadenzas,
an ode to nine candle lives
extinguished in chlorine.
i know what you said about me
above water.
Sarah Parmet is a high school junior who lives off adrenaline and very little sleep. When she’s not struggling in physics, she enjoys writing, dancing and producing music. She is a columnist for the Milking Cat, and her work has been published in The Weight Journal and LEVITATE Magazine.
