Somewhere below the surface, a stillness.
Wild waves smoothed to tug-and-sway, sun’s
acid brilliance filtered through layers of light-bending
blue, ripening from tart lemon to liquid honey. She slips
 
beneath the heaving expanse. Somewhere above her,
summer sky carries the calls of birds and children, the beach
crowded. But as she descends, all air-bound commotion is swallowed
down the salt throat of the sea, water weight like a blanket lulling, breath
 
buoyant in the hold of the lungs, her long hair flowing in time
with the seagrass. Leaving the others behind, her body in the close
grip of saltwater, there is only dance follower and lead. She resurfaces,
floats with ears submerged, water lapping at face edges. Closing her eyes, she tunes
 
herself to the boundless calm that whispers in voiceless sighs around her, welling up
from some fathomless keep below the ocean floor, from the very core of the earth. And
in this moment, she could almost swear she is the first sentient life to ever burst into being.