Air is, itself, a fluid.
Everything in my world moves
underwater,
where screams are 5x faster.
But for someone
who thinks nothing is real,
why do I loop my voice so hard
to perturb the water? Is this solipsism?
To I intone my I enough,
so that I solidify?
I incant, decant myself into molds
I can sit in awhile,
so that an outer layer
braces me for the carnassial teeth
flexing near. Slow, but close.
Nearer, but hypo-real:
my country. These days, it seems to be
a “before” view of civil war diptychs.
If enough people think
there will be war, it becomes inevitable.
It is useless to be amphibious then,
equally hopeless on land
and in sea. I am, myself, a trench.
The land I swam for
was, on average, the empty
between atoms in a swirling soup.
A fluid, therefore.
My propelling arms,
neutrinos in a trenchcoat,
that did not interact with matter,
got me to improbable form: a fluid
upon a fluid within a fluid.¶
© Tolu Oloruntoba
Note on image:
Photo by Ave Calvar Martinez from Pexels