Two months I’ve been swimming. I’ve told everyone. I’m swimming again. It bursts forth, a gasp from my chlorine stained lips. Again, under emphasis, to say I’ve been here before. To mark this is a return. Back in the water! The place where people drown.
I keep saying it: I’m lucky, this is a skill, I should exercise it. There are worse mantras, but this one ranks. Every day I talk myself into the Lycra like I’m one toe hold out of the plane. I sigh the entire drive to the pool. I announce myself with a slam of the gate. I strip.
When I walk carefully to the edge, naked, or nearly, I lack every patience for why I’m here, for the whole purpose of the thing. No virtues to grasp, I dive. Mass slips through my fingers. The chill stuns me into consciousness.
So many bodies of mine I’ve pushed through this water, and I’ve been at war with them all. Never thought of the space around my twisting hips as sacred. Never broke the surface and felt a god. There’s the sigh in the car. The retreat from the line and the lane. I wish it didn’t matter, wish my mind were clear. Wish I could send up my gaze and see the miracle. I think of the mirror hanging on the locker door. The eyes on the way to the shower. How even still I want them on me, want them following the contour of my back, grazing the space between my ribs, the water dripping down my calf. Somewhere in the crease of my breath, can they see something I can’t?
I count the laps. It’s the closest I get to meditation. Start to forget. Start to move like a thing primordial. Pinch that power like skin.
Then ascent, towel to waist. Clean water, sunshine drawing a map over my neck.
The drive home is not so bad. And two months isn’t so long. Exhaustion tempers me. The man made of glass. Bottle, ship. We’ll catch the right wave and float. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow again.
my favorite writer