What if we were hermit crabs? Outgrowing our bodies and their shelters and suddenly needing to go searching for our old shells as if we left something crucially important, like the house keys or our wallet, or parts of our self behind in them?

Swimming

There’s only the deep end.

The shallows silted up.

The water dark and murky.

But still I have to dredge.

There’s an undertow waiting to lasso my ankle

I tread water and cannot see my feet.

I do not want to know what I will find.

I know there’s a riptide.

I read the warnings on the shoreline.

“Unsafe for swimming”

I am not exactly swimming,

I’m dredging the lake.

I am afraid to feel today.

I cannot even see my feet.

I fight to stay afloat.

The undertow sings to me.

If I let myself submerge,

let my feet touch the mud

that sucks in feet to ankles

if you stand still a moment too long

in the cool mineral muck,

like algae and duckweed quicksand,

or brackish quick-concrete,

I may not resurface.

I recall it all now in an instant.

I am dredging for myself—

that empty husk I left behind in the depths.

—Pixie Bruner