Element

By Craig Dobson

Surfacing too slow,
knowing he hasn’t made it, 
the boy blows his last gasp, 
parting the water above, filling 
his open mouth not with drowning
but his own dead breath,

before the air’s sweet ease is his again.

Though now he knows 
nothing lives beyond, 
and nothing this side can show 
more than binds him 
to those dreams of rising, wiser 
than what he left down there –  
staring, lifeless, at its stolen air.

Craig Dobson has had poetry and short fiction published in magazines in the USA, UK, Europe and Asia. He’s working towards his first collection of poetry and short stories.