How I Learned to Float

for the girls who were told to sink quietly

Calida Rawles, With Wings of Infinity

I. Before the Water

I was born in a city where the air pressed against your skin
like a mother checking your temperature—
warm, watchful, waiting to warn you.

The heat came with lessons.
My grandmother’s voice was a soft thunder,
rolling low through kitchen tile and warm cookies.
She said:

“Keep your mouth closed.
Don’t flail.
Don’t want too much.”

And so I didn’t.

I learned to stand on the edges—
concrete pool lips, school hallways,
ankles slick with a hope I didn’t yet have the words for,
watching kids cannonball into sunlight
like freedom was an inheritance
and the water never bit back.

I kept my toes curled,
counting the ways a girl could disappear.
How a name could be too heavy.
How laughter could echo like a dare.
How swimming looked like magic
but might be memory—
and memory could drown you
before you took your first real breath.

---

II. Sinking Lessons

The first time I slipped,
it wasn’t a pool.
It was a hallway echo.
A teacher who asked the question, then didn’t call my name.
A friend’s sharp smile that sliced me out of the group text.

It was a Tuesday.
It was always a Tuesday.
The kind where silence becomes soup,
thick and hard to swallow,
and you hold your breath in the cafeteria
because someone’s joke sits too close to your skin.

I learned to sink in plain sight.
No splash.
Just stillness.

I made myself small.
Smaller than a whisper.
I became so quiet,
even my shadow forgot to follow.

They called it composure.
They called it maturity.
But really,
I was learning the choreography of disappearing.
I was dancing at the bottom of myself,
feet never touching the floor,
lungs filled with all the things I couldn’t say.

Full post at 9:00 AM EST tomorrow…