Meeting Myself in the Chesapeake Bay

I did leave something in the estuary last Friday.
It wasn’t a wrinkled dollar bill,
miserably wet in my swimsuit pocket. It wasn’t
a soggy pizza crust, now departed.

The ugly brown water took from me,
a section of sadness
that it later will turn into salt.
My tears making a transition
into ocean, and I
into invincible—
imagining myself as a child
for a single moment
doggy-paddling towards
the sun tucked into the water beside me,
resembling a breakfast hash brown.
I will get there, I think.
The water can’t take me,
but I can take myself.

Originally published in the 2022 Poetry Marathon Anthology.