Poem: Thinking Exhaustion Would Be All Right

 

Thinking Exhaustion Would Be All Right

The light in the room is clinical and 

I hold to the edge of the pool now,

Finally allowing myself to swim

So gently into the cool water here

And I grow tired—tired of swimming,

Tired of the penetrating light that 

Bores into my being exposing me

When I don’t want to be seen. I just want 

To not be. Can’t I just be erased?

And, in the middle of the pool, I just

Stop swimming and let my body adrift

On the ripples that I made from moving.

I sway slightly, sinking very little

Knowing now that I am never not

Going to be present. I am not here

As an etching on paper to be smudged

Erased, burned without any evidence

Telling others that I am or was here.

I again pull myself to the surface

And long for the edge where I can atone

For thinking exhaustion would be all right.

April 2024

About This Poem

This one was inspired by an indoor pool in Paris where I was swimming with my son. There were windows everywhere that let in light without seeing anything outside, the entries were all hollow sounding and there was no shallow end to the pool. There was also very little room around the pool to sit, so that the entire room seemed a place to drown. This poem touches on that and the pointlessness of thinking we are completely autonomous and could somehow just disappear through death. The photo is a pool in Palm Springs, California. I don't think I would ever want to photograph that depressing pool in Paris...