Swamp
(originally written apr. 21st, 2025)
Swamp air fogs up my lungs. Silence hangs like strange fruit. Summer suffocates me. Salty sweat coats my eyes like rain on glass. The stillness shatters as an alligator stalks me. It stares, and its icy gaze shocks my skin, my hair stiff with static. Fog swirls into a hot, hateful hurricane. Salt, sweat, seeds, stalks, sand, silt stir in the air. It dissipates into a smell of iron and rot. The gator is left smothering me with its stare, staining my mind, scratching at my spine. We breathe the same air, but I can’t grasp the reason for its sly smile. I struggle to speak. It sees me as a succulent sheep. The sun shakes me awake, and my skin is covered in rose bush bruises.
commentary
this is prosetry more than anything. a friend suggested this format as a prompt and i immediately wanted to relate it to florida somehow. swamp it is! i also saw an opportunity to reference Strange Fruit by Abel Meeropol, which is a genuinely haunting poem that still rings true. this poem is meant to be personal and political, but the alligator represents one person in my life in particular. side note: i'm kinda obsessed with the imagery of a hurricane because they scare the shit out of me, and Milton was still fresh in my mind while writing this.