Thank You!
for teaching me to flip at every wall
despite the searing of my shoulders;
that the sound waves of my pain
must be muffled by chlorinated water.
for the nights that I spent thrashing my legs,
slipping my hands into the liquid void
for my path was reduced to the Black Line,
six feet below the surface, whispering
that the hundredth of a second matters
more than my years of burning sacrifice.