Within the poem, “Pretending To Drown” there’s an overall theme of wetness that surrounds the work. With lines such as “burst upon the water”, “on the shore”, and “the lake saw you”. Mentioning these large bodies of water made me think of multiple ideas, first is freedom. Big bodies of water are so vast and large that it makes it possible for creatures to hide and travel as they want. With that comes a sense of liberty and I think the reason why Saeed chooses a body of water to be the meeting place of these two lovers was because of how it can also be inaccessible to people who may be afraid or have never swum before. There comes a level of danger to the water because of how huge it is. There are unknown creatures, he states, “our feet touched a snapping turtle, every shadow a water moccasin”. This danger is both literal but also metaphorical. The next theme is defiance. As there is danger in the water, there is also immense danger in these lovers being caught together or having sexual relations. The line “our clothes begged us to be good boys again” shows this more internal conflict within these people with feeling as though what they are doing is immoral. However, even with these conflicted feelings the boys continue as lust and love takes over. The final idea was the literal sense of wetness. The body of water represents the freedom within them to explore themselves and their bodies in relation to each other. The lines “I resurfaced, slick grin, knowing glance; you pushed me back under. I pretended to drown, then swallowed you whole.” With the title of the poem being in relation to these sentences indicates how the poem may be more explicit with the relationship between these two.