The water here is clear and bright.

It has a summer dazzle.

On this beautiful island

the water laps against the shore and I smell salt and shells.

A shore of bleached white sand running through my open hand.

It’s been a year without a poem.

The world became too real.

And where did I go in that dark space?

Too crystal clear

and full of stalking fears.

Trapped in fractured time

with dreams from fentanyl.

It haunts me still; ten weeks in hell, unconscious, surviving on my wits