a brief rendering

i drop ice cubes in my hot chamomile tea 
all august, they melt quickly
& i imagine each cube as a raft sinking 
into the open ocean--no maybe 
just a raft in a swimming pool.
we could all use less catastrophic metaphors. 
my childhood friend's pool was a circle,
so we would swim around & around
to try & start a "whirlpool." 
all the pool toys movied with us:
the floaties & the plastic darts &
pool noodles. i believed we were 
a few turns away from being sucked to the bottom.
i consider myself laying on an ice cube
in my own mug of tea. 
i take handfuls of tea bags & throw them
into the memory of my friend's pool.
she diminishes to a freckle in the sun.
all the pool toys melt into clumps of plastic.
soon, the cube will be gone 
& i will tread water in the tea.
i remind myself that chamomile 
is a kind of flower: white & blinking.
a sea of dainty eyes. 
someone reading this poem might wonder
what went wrong with the speaker.
they might guess i'm mentally ill
but that would miss the point.
the point of course is
the moment where there is no more ice cube.
water returns to water. the coolness
of the cube moves around the hot tea 
like a ghost. i sip the tea 
in my humid room & i melt just like the cube.
soon i will be a cool ghost
ambling between the rooms of my apartment--
becoming each day more & more indiscernible
from the hard wood floor or the off-white walls. 
the pool is whirling still 
underneath my tongue. my friend was a girl 
with short brown hair. would it make more sense
if i told you she is a ghost now too?
the tea's color deepens until it could be dirt.
i drink a whole field of eyelashes.
i blink, cool & dwindling.