This is for Char, who believes in me when I don't believe in myself.
Enjoy.
* * *
End of the vacation
You kissed me violently and threw your head back with a
laugh, kicking off across the top of the pool like an otter or some
half-glimpsed siren. I sat in shallow
water at the foot of your wake, small waves lapping my lips. Sparrows averted their eyes, before flying away. The breeze came up and filled the sail of
clean sheets on the clothes line, lifting up the day as if we might take to the
high seas, set a course for uncharted waters.
You gestured to me from the other side of the pool, inviting.
I had just read the story of a woman who built her bed above
the tomb of her husband beneath the bedroom floorboards. Taken too soon, he’d always promised he’d
never leave her or the home they’d made together, and she took him perhaps too
literally. Slept every night next to
him, until she would eventually join him again.
It was gruesome and romantic, in equal measure.
You kept gesturing me to your side. I was not a strong swimmer, and you knew it. The breeze kicked up tiny breakers between
here and there. It was the last day of
vacation. The last day of too many
cigarettes and too many beers in our scorched yard. I felt sun-weakened and paper-thin,
parched. You latched me with your
eyes, and the wind blew up a gale in my ears, filling the sheets, and the
pillow cases looked like hot-air balloons.
I could taste something that was ending as the pool-water formed waves,
crashing on my head. Through sheets of
spray, I saw you smiling and wondered how I’d look laying on the bottom, all
oxygen pushed out of me, something wrecked and water-logged.
In an instant, I made up my mind. Better to be driftwood than flotsam. I threw myself into the pounding surf, flailing
arms and kicking legs, thrashing through the water to where I imagined you’d be
on the other side. Knowing that without
reaching you, I’d forever feel your arms, lifting me up, pulling me from the
pool. Laying me on the stinging
concrete, your lips pressed to mine, with the sun beating us down.
I knew as I took in mouthfuls of pool water that wherever I
made land, you’d be there, forever beside me.
And the sun would be shining on your cappuccino skin, glinting electric
in the silver of your hair. And you
would gently lay me in a shady spot. You
would lie down beside me. Even if I sunk
like a stone from too much of everything, you would make sure that our promises
were kept.
