half remembered

There's a great and fearsome secret hiding in my memory;
There are a thousand thousand notes between the bottom of this ladder
and the sea.
I hear them singing far below:
   Breathe in, I'll come inside your lungs,
   Beating, leaving bruises –
   Nobody in here chooses –
   – and then I own you till I'm born
   – no, wait! come back! where have you gone?
   Where are you? (where am I,
   am I, am I, am I, am I?)
   – I'll arrive, alive, undignified,
    Unmade, as yet unshorn.
I'll descend until the last rung, and fall ringing 'til I drown.
I'll have stolen all those notes from singing air by breathing in, and then
In bubbles, all agurgle, they'll flush their way back out again.
Exhaling, I'll swim down.