in yr swimming pool

By | 16 August 2019

even in yr swimming pool /
our bodies moved in opposition

first, you’d torpedo (vertical)
limbs slippery and efficient
then clamber out with a shrug
and swollen pupils
just to do it all again
hipbones slicing through the blue!
as if water was invented to wait
on the other side of air:
god’s dependable crash pad
for man’s sickest tricks

then, i’d expand (horizontal)
my spongy body
cloaked in chemicals,
palms upturned,
eyelids pink against the sun,
silently following
some women’s weekly recipe:
macerate for twelve minutes,
play-dead for twenty,
soak till extremities are thoroughly pruned

you said you loathed
school swimming lessons
(was it the unspoken ratio
of urine-to-chlorine,
or the vision of yr classmates swimming laps:
suddenly anonymous in their matching latex caps
and silver goggles,
thrashing towards you
like a squadron
of aquatic baby cyborgs?)

and one time I was told
not to let my ears touch water:
your thoughts might soften, escape
and clog the pool filter

as if it were a crime
to renounce mind and muscle,
or dunk a sugar lump in a teacup
(at this you’d scoff
and spool yr legs into a cannonball
yr litany? yr prayer? a simple devil-may-care)

even in yr swimming pool /
these past lives sprawled between us

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