Fragile Tides

H Roth

H Roth (she/her) is a poet and writer living with chronic illness and pain. She explores themes of grief, loss, and hope in her writing. She lives in Canada with her two beloved cats.

Fragile Tides

Before I learned sex should not hurt

before silver nitrate burns, operating rooms, trocar scars

and previously indecipherable medical jargon

cluttered my medical chart like flotsam

I was fifteen on a beach in Costa Rica,

pulled into a riptide and promptly spat out

delirious on adrenaline and possibility

Too young to truly appreciate my fair fortune

(the copious signage

we had blatantly ignored!)

Years later, in a body long

turned unwieldy

still deemed an unreliable narrator,

I wash ashore and am stranded

healing incisions littering my body like debris

Now daily

I ride the fragile tides of dissociation

tamping down tenuous, friable nerves with faltering hands

I dream of drawing my agony out to sea

like sucking venom from a snake bite

taking a deep breath and sinking

sharply below the falsely glimmering surface

only to accidentally swallow myself in the process