You are tired: lay down
on your side, curl your
body slightly so the tub
fits you like a cot. Let
the water come to you,
welcome it like night,
practice drowning but
only just— it won’t take
you this time, not yet,
but this way you’ll know
it’s cold, many-fingered
touch before you need to.
Listen as you close your
eyes, and you will hear
the air conditioner’s hum
below the ticking of water
singing you to sleep, up
there somewhere like God.
Ariel Francisco is the author of All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017) and Before Snowfall, After Rain
(Glass Poetry Press, 2016). Born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents, he completed his MFA
at Florida International University in Miami. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2016, Fjords Review,
Gulf Coast, PANK, Poets.org, Prelude, Quiet Lunch, Washington Square, and elsewhere. He lives in South Florida
(for now).