Submerged A Collection by Santino Prinzi

Submerged

Your memory wanes as I descend towards the seabed. Lingering is your touch on my fingertips. I’m long forgotten on yours. Deeper I dive, searching. You’ve left me in my breathlessness. My lungs bubble. I want to swim towards the sunlight, but how can I resurface without hopeful warmth? The ocean soul envelopes me in ways you refused; now you’ll never know the crash of my waves. Muted desires billow from my throat, dragging my voice to the depths, my cascade censored. My silence will stroke the shores. Put your ear to a conch shell; you’ll hear my suffering, but will you listen?

Tempestuous

I can’t see your star; it fails to burst through the granite distortions swirling overhead. With hope I step further into the wasteland. I dare to find you. Your sweet whispers seem so hollow, turbulent, lost amongst my howling idolatry. I’ve changed my mind; I don’t wish to find you now, you’re not you, you’re different. Fists clench. Truth lies again. You’re here, somewhere, or some version of you. Either way I dream to understand you, us, myself—I’m empty. I stand in the eye of the storm, but I’m out of your vision. Never has the silence between us screamed so loud.

Sequester

I’ll pretend I don’t see you, but I can’t pretend I don’t still feel you. Your outline blurs when I glance at you with those two men. I think I’ll stay here, out the way, in the background of your life. River runs over rock and lust, and it tries to erase my pain. I hear you bite an apple—your crunch ripples my blood. I won’t taste your succulence. You risk a peek. In your nakedness, in your decadence, you smirk at the men; I know you’re thinking of me, of us, bare and decaying too, but unlike you I can’t ignore it. Unspoken words gnaw at my tongue; they try and pry my lips open. Still, I smile at memories I’ve invented, at emotions I can’t suppress. I’ll never blame you for any of this.

Santino Prinzi is currently an English Literature with Creative Writing student at Bath Spa University, and was awarded the 2014/15 Bath Spa University Flash Fiction Prize. His flash fiction and prose poetry has been published, or is forthcoming, in various places including Litro Online, Flash Frontier, the 2014 and 2015 National Flash Fiction Day (UK) anthologies, Unbroken Journal, and has been selected for The Best of Vine Leaves Journal 2015.  His website is tinoprinzi.wordpress.com and his Twitter is @tinoprinzi.