My first memory
is drowning.

I never told anyone that.

My mother broke her pager
jumping in the pool to save me.

My first memory.

Like life was splashing water on my face
to finally wake me up.

Drowning
in that everclear water
in a cheap apartment swimming pool.

Clean and crisp
and suffocating.

Scrambling for a lack of air
I twirled like aviators.
Jets of confusion, first enlightenment
shot out of me, scared.

Then silent.

The rush, like a heroin drip,
as I dripped down into the shallow water.
As if I were already part of it.

I let go.
Gave up fighting.
Didn't accept, but relented, relinquished control, submitted...
and understood that this was something I could not change.

Crisp, clean pool with
the dead boy in the center.
That was to be my headline.

And then air.

Desperate need to help
this dying boy.

I didn't feel like I was dying...
just floating.
No remorse
because no memory existed in me before this.

The communal spirit communicating the fight against drowning.

My fate and nothing else.

My first memory.

Saved.

The next year
four years old ran around
and caught me.

Walking this shitty apartment complex feeding
squirrels cheap cheese squares
with the girl next door.

Explaining the importance of letting go,
realizing that we are not trapped,
but truly imprisoned. Letting go.
Not letting god.
Just letting go.
AA got it half right.

Four.
Explaining death.
Explaining that Jesus was a slave
upon the cross.
Made himself a slave, a martyr.
Could have run,
could have taught the world
that god is not a mantle-piece
or a whisper on the lips
but the pure, fiery gasp
of a dying child
like the gurgle of the last drop of gas going into your car at the station.

And she just sort of stared
and fed the squirrels.

My second memory...
realizing I cannot communicate my first memory.

Very interesting plastic, so many of us don't remember our first memories.

I'll share mine with you, it was a very simple realization:

there was darkness, then it felt like a switch was flipped on the inside and i knew I was aware, and my first thought was:

"Oh NO, I'm here!!"-------very strange

Haha. Dig it. Thanks for sharing, man.
It's true, what I wrote.
And I can relate to what you're describing... like a switch being flipped on.
Thanks for reading.
And responding.
Cheers!