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OtherArt of Family Medicine

Swimming against the current

Marisa Webster
Canadian Family Physician August 2019; 65 (8) 567;
Marisa Webster
Second-year anesthesiology resident at the University of Calgary in Alberta and is a past winner of the Cynthia Davis Writing Prize and the Hunter Humanities Award.
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Figure

Air Hunger” is a poem loosely based on a quote by Virginia Woolf. She writes:

I’m fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It’s an odd feeling though, writing against the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course, I shall.

This poem is about having the knowledge that one is an outsider, yet still deciding to dive in and swim against the current—both figuratively and literally. There is always risk in choosing to stand alone.

Air hunger

She is the girl who dives headfirst

into the deep end, sheds her life

jacket like an orange peel.

Underwater, her gangly legs

trail like the tentacles of a jellyfish.

The other girls watch

poolside, dip their toes into the water,

soft bodies stung by fear,

mouths prickle with envy.

Cool waves nip at their 8-year-old feet.

The cement is slick, unforgiving.

They scrutinize

in the hot pride of summer.

It is a rite of passage—

the baptism of a fierce season.

With a sudden snap

of the diving board, she jumps.

Its reverberations emit a steady growl.

The other girls point and laugh and shriek

when she erupts from the water,

hair matted, head bobbing with the throb of panic.

Coughing and sputtering, she tries

to paddle to shore, a lame dog.

The lifeguard grabs her by the armpits,

lays her flat in a film of water,

reflected fire of the sun.

Her airways tighten like tiny fists

pale neck,

a broken swan.

The other girls gawk,

hover from above as if watching

from some glass-bottom boat.

She is breathless,

silent as though still submerged,

sinking towards the inky depths,

cast out, alone, at sea.

Footnotes

  • Competing interests

    None declared

  • Copyright© the College of Family Physicians of Canada
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Canadian Family Physician: 65 (8)
Canadian Family Physician
Vol. 65, Issue 8
1 Aug 2019
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Swimming against the current
Marisa Webster
Canadian Family Physician Aug 2019, 65 (8) 567;

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