Upward Into the Full Expansion

In lengthening moments,
waves of absent turmoil still
like a glassy lake surface in purple dusk —
our truths are known there,
in reflected clarity of air,
they have been known, to ourselves
and to those not descended
to the cold and dark depths of denial;

I have been submerged there before,
in pasts of murk and stunted brown algal bloom,
I have seen the fissured, empty shells     
of failed self-preservation — vacant, cracked,
refracting in weak, lake floor currents
of mute and distorted rationalization —
the need for truth an urgent and inexorable
oxygen hunger.

Down there, your form loses its boundaries.
Your being swells like waterlogged wood.
You move with the slow, viscous motion
of sunken resistance, desires leaden and dull,
vision reduced by the obscuring dimness,
preparing only for now acclimatized aquamarine dreams
and your next helplessly dissembling step.