Beneath the Saltwater Skin

The ocean knew my name

before I ever spoke it aloud.

It whispered through the ribs

of sleepless nights,

through mirrors fogged with borrowed faces,

through the silence I wore

like an iron diving suit.

I spent years underwater

pretending the pressure was natural.

Every breath felt rehearsed.

Every smile stitched itself

to a stranger’s mouth.

People called it living.

But even shipwrecks

look peaceful from the shore.

There was a version of me

that learned how to survive

by disappearing slowly —

a paper body dissolving

in salt and ceremony.

I carried him carefully.

Like a coffin.

Like a prayer I no longer believed in.

And when the tides finally turned,

they did not ask permission.

The sea pulled hard.

It dragged old names

from my pockets,

peeled false skin from bone,

filled my lungs with truth

so sharp it almost felt like drowning.

Maybe it was.

Maybe becoming

is always a kind of death first.

At the bottom of myself,

I found strange creatures glowing —

soft-bodied hopes,

unspoken pronouns,

small impossible beauties

that only survive in darkness.

I touched them gently.

For the first time,

nothing inside me asked to be hidden.

Above the surface,

the world still argues

about storms and tides and what belongs where.

But underwater,

everything transforms.

Coral builds itself from ruin.

Pearls begin as wounds.

Even drowned things

learn how to shimmer.

So if you ask about the person I used to be,

I will tell you this:

he was not a lie.

He was a lighthouse collapsing

during the storm

so I could finally reach shore.

And sometimes,

when the waves are quiet,

I still mourn him.

But I do not miss drowning.