the swimmer

floating in the lake beside me

she dove in blue and brown

she stroked her arms through memory

the chlorine crackle of an eight-year-old

first time a-swim with a girl

her eyelashes glued and gleamed

like trapezoidal mirrors

and ever since that boyhood crawl

I’d wonder whether, were I to add water

a girl would shatter in kaleidoscopic blather

but as I swam beside that graceful woman

who’d pried that memory free from me

I saw to my delight her turquoise eyeliner

stayed unblurred despite immersion

her hair became lasagna pasta

and it made me very hungry

ovals of heat and cold the size of squids

would bubble up to gulp our legs

the ice of peaks who’d tumbled down

to join with solar-powered pressure

and I wished that we were naked

so I could wrap myself around her

warm and cool like the water

I wished I could strip off her dripping clothes

melt into her like rock candy

lick dulce de leche from her nipples

press breath and tongue into her heart and mouth

dissolve with her into one glistening dolphin

leaping and wriggling our flukes in the sun

but damn it all I’m a perfect gentleman

I’m what a swimmer needs

a floatie, a strong wind

a kind voice, a strong friend

so instead I swam beside the prison wall

and told myself after all she and I are not gods

we have no right to combine our lives

we cannot become a hawk or turkey vulture

we cannot kite the wind

we can only look at each other

and care with all our blood

like a dozen red flags snapping in the wind

laced to their poles

we could move but we were tied

to those moments in the lake

we disentangled from the water

and rode our separate ways

but the lake did not release us

the sun still wanted more

as summer dawns again I hear the finch trill for her mate

I see the diffuse ribbon of smog in the west pick up the sun above the hills

the breeze through my bedroom window sings to me

that beautiful swimmer is awake

I hear the breeze whisper on her skin

and I know

how happy she is

that she wakes in the same world

the same lake as me