In “Still Drowning,” Dawn Tasaka Steffler uses the repetitious form of the pantoum to allow the poem’s protagonist to return, again and again, to her grief and regret. Variations of designated lines permit the devastating details of past events to “bleed” into the woman’s present moment. The poem focuses on an impossible loss—one impossible to remember, one impossible to forget. —Court Harler
As part of her yearly physical, the doctor orders a full blood panel.
That night she is thirsty but she’s fasting, she can’t have food or water.
There used to be a swimming pool in the backyard but she filled it in with dirt
years ago, after her friend’s toddler son fell in and drowned.
She is thirsty but she’s fasting, she can’t have even a sip of water.
Before going to bed, she brushes and flosses her teeth so hard they bleed.
She often dreams about her friend’s son who fell in her pool and drowned.
After which her friend moved away; they aren’t friends anymore.
Before going to bed, she brushes and flosses her teeth so hard they bleed.
Clean clean clean, she thinks, imagining the bright red arteries in her body.
She understands why her friend moved away, why they aren’t friends anymore.
She, not her friend, had found the boy, eyes open, at the bottom of the pool.
Clean clean clean, she thinks and closes her eyes, imagines bright red blood.
She sees hands and hair floating up like a kelp forest. At least
she was the one who dove in, sparing her friend those eyes, open but unseeing.
Meanwhile, her own son sleeps in a dorm room so very far away.
Years ago, she turned hands and hair floating up like a ghostly kelp forest
into a garden of flowers in a swimming pool full of dirt.
As flowers drowse, because the sun is so very far away, she decides,
if tomorrow her doctor orders her to give away all the blood in her body, she will.
DAWN TASAKA STEFFLER had a highly commended story in the October 2025 Bath Flash Fiction Award and her most recent stories appear in Fractured Lit, New World Writing Quarterly, and Gooseberry Pie.
Featured image by CHRSNDRSN, courtesy of Unsplash.
Flash the Court 