I was afraid I’d have to come to the surface and breathe and be clean and tell the truth, that I liked the romance of you, your soft heart with all its quiet fervor that I could hold and massage in my small hands and touch my fingertips together, the thumb and the middle, feeling bigger than I was and be proud because you were the world to me and I would never let go, instead let the impossible weight of your spirit kick any last, lingering air from the depths of my lungs and still my speech and I would become you and say not another word. Not even when the waves blew in, trying to drag me to shore and calling out, “Come, get heavy with me,” drawing me away from the center of the sea and crashing their foamy fists against their own blurry edge but I held onto you, our world, with all that you had, because you were my strength, and therefore the Greatness in me.
in parentheses 