Tunnelling

She is scared to be underground, could not live in London,
is not a natural earthworm or rabbit, displacing soil and roots,
replacing them somewhere else. She is a fish, she reckons,
though I say the concept is much the same, but with water:
you propel it through and around your tiny streamlined body.
Yes, she muses, but the water feels like a parent, its palms
curling around me, damp with weeds, and there will always
be a surface, somewhere, and I can kick and kick and make it.
I say, there is a surface here, too, pointing at the tile ceiling,
up there are markets and incense and foxes and tall houses.
But I don't know how to make my mark, she wails at me.
The water was never the same after it held my shape.
It would kiss my shadow, flowers glowing pink and cyan.
I can do that for you, I want to say. We head up, to the light.