There is nothing as strong as a tidal wave.

It crashes over your head, 

douses you in salt,

and pushes tears from your eyes

whether you want it to or not.

I was eleven when I first drowned. 

The tidal wave crept up on my silently

and then it was all around me, 

muffling my ears and all rational thought I could have had.

It smothered me.

I forgot how to breathe, or swim, or open my eyes,

and the air was stolen from my lungs before I could cry out.

I survived.

But two days later, I drowned again. 

And again the next day,

and the next,

and the next,

until I learned that these waves washing over me had another name.

I was told that in order to survive these floods,

I would need to find a foothold,

somewhere on solid ground 

where I could stay until the tears stopped falling

and the water stopped tossing me around

like a ragdoll.

So I found my foothold,

and I began to write. 

It didn't matter what I wrote, 

as long as pen touched paper. 

And when that ink began to scrawl its way across my page,

the paper began to dry. 

The saltwater moved away as if vaporized with a flame,

and little by little, the flood resided.

When I wrote the last word and looked up,

I was dry.

The sun was shining, 

and I was safe.

On the page below me was a poem 

that had somehow saved me,

and in the midst of the chaos I had forgotten to notice

that I could breathe again.