Handcuffed and head down in the tank,
two and a half minutes behind 
the black velvet curtain, deadbolts 
across the opening and nothing 
but the sound of water filling my ears, I discover
myself on the verge of a possible mistake. This is to say
 
I meant for Anatole to leave me bound this time ’round;
the longer the lapping occurs in my head, 
the closer I come to the governance of happiness. I am truly 
singing in here, not drowning but singing, and if only you

could hear me strumming in this little ocean
of sleep, you would know this is my real gift: to sleep 
through the séance of my life, awakened only 
by the cleverest of parlor tricks—waxy eggs sliding 
through ear canals and leaden pencils 
pulled through long fingers. There is nothing
that disarms me like milk cans full of pennies,

and your heart, nothing that unlocks me
like disremembering the dead who tell heaven
through blue flame, nothing secretly more disheartening
than the idea of an afterlife that means I will have to live 

on beyond the chains of this one, clasped and traveling 
from one watery cylinder to the next, proving myself again 
the prince of air. If cuffed and spun long enough, 
will I forget how you forgot how to 
kiss me that night, how your mouth

is still the dark space my hand slips into before pulling
the blinking yellow canary from the crushed velvet 
of a gentleman’s top hat? If I let the burble of water 
that asks to be my breath back into the pockets of lungs, 
can I have you back again, telling me over pans of apple betty 

skate blades on the frozen Danube
and a girl’s magic is cutting men’s hearts to lace? Anatole 
slips the bolt, unbraids the clank from my hands, the coil
of what I know I can escape from. I flip myself 
right-side up, dripping like a newborn,
ready to pretend I have willed myself alive.