If People Are Water Poem by Mae Chase

If people are water,
I am not your gentle stream,
The crystal water flowing round rocks,
Never battering.
The way you can see the fish minding their own below.

If people are water,
I am not your calm river
Lapping over soft sand and running past trees,
Simply watching
And content with the place that it is going.

If people are water,
I am the Atlantic,
Ice cold to the point of aching bones
And numbing skin.
I am the Atlantic, chapping skin and lips and mouth.

If people are water,
The harsh lines of the waves
Cut jagged like the rocks I carry,
Far underneath.
And I sit among them, struggling for another breath

If people are water,
I am the winter storm
Choppy at best, destructive at best,
But deadly at worst,
The way the waves hurl themselves at the stubborn shore.

If people are water,
I am the riptide, but
We are not, and I am not, but still,
If we were,
If we were water I would be nothing but the sea.