Portrait of My Father Drowning

in the type of love he deserves; nestled
in his lap, a young me is learning
how to swim. I flounder in
water that is only knee-deep,

while, fully-dressed on the pool’s
edge, my mother records
the lesson. Blood will always
be outweighed by the body

of water it wades into. Earth,
itself, I realize, is just a body
of waters. Years later, I spend a summer
patrolling a different pool’s edge. I lose

count of how many sons are held
by their fathers; large &
calloused hands buoying
their lineages, these islands

and their fluttering limbs.

This poem appeared in We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage, edited by Hala Alyan and Zeina Hashem Beck and published by Persea Books.