Night Swimming

by April Pagaling

I practiced hurt
like how pearls are cultivated,
methodically, with attention,
this art of controlled wounding.

I too became skilled
in the art of turning trauma lustrous.
This is how: first,
you learn to treasure what hurts you,
learn how beautiful things come
from bodies in distress.

But the ocean knows better.
It knows the difference
between cultivation and calcification,
between keeping and containing.
The pearls do not need your midnight tending.

Watch how waves return
everything to sand:
tide-worn shells,
salt-smooth stones.
Even the stories we tell ourselves
about why we deserve our damage.

Tonight, I wade into dark water,
open myself like a shell splitting.
Everything white spills out—
pearls, pain, memory, light.

What remains
is an empty vessel.
Clean. Bare. Ready
to fill with sea.