Watermarks

By Kelsey Bryan-Zwick

I have learned to scrawl
on every available scrap of paper
and though well intentioned
I find inevitably

I have a lot of bad poetry to write
many awkward birds to draw
doodle more than I take note

I bend like a river
some parts of me are clear as glass
you can see fish and stones
beneath the surface

Other parts are all swirl and eddy
all falls and whitewater
the roar and bubble
of captured air
drowned and released

I choke on my own words
until I can spit them out