Submerged in Kenya

Submerged in love

Submerged in loss

Submerged in pain

Submerged in memory

Submerged in emotion

Submerged in dream

Submerged in water

I am submerged.

This collection is a narration of my current experience. I have been stuck in Kenya, treating it as a residency almost, wanting to capture the world around me. Looking at how light filters through the identity of this landscape, how it blurs the bad and enhances the good. How water, warm Indian Ocean wter, heals and grows beauty in its depths yet hides danger, in this enigmatic deep blue green. Submerged in water, in the hapiness of the palm filled landscape, I dipped my toes ito love. There was a pause, a moment of knowing this beauty before me could not possibly last but before me was a moment too magical to ignore. It is the moment of knowing a kiss is imminent, of licking your lips and looking up into their eyes, butterflies primed to fly; this is the edge of the fall. And I let myself dive.

In the water of you everything is beautiful, a sheen of pink spreads over the landscapes that you take me to. I see through you, I am submerged in you.

One must come up for air. Reality is clear an there is no you, instead only places I saw through you. These landscapes become emblems of you. From our lack of connection my mind slips into the memory of past connections, of others that held my hand. I think of those hands that were not given permission. I think o the 97% that did not give consent.

I am submerged in dream; my mind and body taken to far away places where women are people and not objects. Where my body can be mine, and not an entity of desire. I wake from my dream to a world of beauty nonetheless, where sun shines on hills and trees and I am happy to be submerged.