Heavy Lungs

They said he looked calm, pulled from the river's cold hold.

Just a boy, maybe twenty, a story left untold.

His eyes, they said, were open, gazing up at the gray.

As if he watched the clouds, fading slow away.

I feel it sometimes, that press of the dark, thick air.

The way a breath gets stuck, a silent, heavy snare.

Not water in the lungs, not a real, final gulp,

but the weight of everything, a quiet, inward pulp.

It’s the slow sink, the mud at the bottom of the mind.

Leaving a wake of what you couldn’t find.

Just that quiet release, the body going slack.

No flailing, no thrash. Just no turning back.