Resurfacing

She is coming up for air, but surfacing is not gentle. It is a negotiation with the deep.

Hands break the waterline first, one shielding, one searching, one framing the eye that refuses to drown. Three faces share one neck because grief, rage, and peace all learned to swim in the same body. The fingers are not hiding her. They are assembling her. This is what it means to hold yourself together when the world has tried to take you apart.

The void behind her is black. Not empty. Pregnant. It is the place before language, where you decide if you will be named or numbered. Then the waterline erupts in colour. Red for what was shed. Yellow for what was saved. Green for what grew back. Blue for what still holds her. These are not decorative rings. They are ripples. The physics of impact. Proof that something heavy fell here and the world is still answering

This is resurfacing is the verb, not the victory lap. The moment your lungs remember they have a right to the sky. The moment your hands stop covering your face and start building it instead. To resurface is to admit you went under, to show the waterline on your body and call it a border, not a scar.

She does not rise to be seen. She rises to see

This deep, and she is still here.

This broken, and she is still becoming

Resurfacing asks: What survives when you come back to yourself?

Answer: Everything that mattered.