It is like a brooding darkness

Sitting heavily on my shoulders

I know this because my mother does not look into my eyes anymore

She says my eyes are no longer calm like the seas of amakohia

She says they are now like tornadoes and hurricanes

I do not tell my mother that in my dreams, I get drowned in the ocean.

Ocean so deep, water so black

Instead I say

Mother, I have forgotten what it feels like to be light

To float on my own terms