Once I was eaten by the sea—
its waves, the hands that grabbed at me.
No air to breathe, no land for feet,
it seemed that I was all but lost:
blind and beaten, thrown and tossed.

But then I heard the sweetest sound:
my own heart’s beat—pound, pound, pound.
And up from those waves, my body rose
until my face had broken shore.

My eyes, they burned; my ears, they rung,
but that deep fear was all but gone.