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Drowning

Donna M. Davis

Father, you mocked me,
the child too scared to swim.
You boasted that you weren’t afraid,
though you nearly drowned in a city creek
when you were young.
The first time you went under,
your nostrils burned with pain;
the second time, you gulped water,
and it all went quiet,
until a stranger pulled you out.
You said it might have been
a good way to die, drowsy with fluid,
not like a brook trout reeled in,
goggle-eyed, gills choking on oxygen.
The day you died of a heart attack,
I walked into your room
and drew the bedsheet over your swollen face.
Father, I was right to be afraid.
There’s no really good way to die.
It could be sharp and sudden
or filled with agonizing pain,
like the piercing of the heart you suffered
as you thrashed on the shore of you blankets
and gasped for that last breath of air.

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