THROUGH LAKEMULCH AND COLD WATER, |
we stumble, duck, dolphin-dive over ropes toward the center. We agree it’s impossible to describe want. Upturned lips, bodies a swell of heat. The sun crochets the ripples with light, and we spin circles until the trees blur. Is the sky darkening or are all these leaves blearing into bruise? I open my eyes beneath the surface. Air bubbles rise and you reach toward me. Someone once said this used to be a suburb until the city filled the canyon. One man decided he couldn’t leave and drowned. We dive deep in search of rooftops, ephemera, a metacarpal, scapula. I wonder whether the man was alone, whether anyone remembered him. And on the trail back, we dodge poison oak, one shadow echoing another. Cicadas chirp their steady song. I’m not sure whose hair drips down my shoulder in search of somewhere warm to land. Something rattles in the distance while the sun burns our skin, glimmering like this brush in the breeze, or like the shards of broken glass by our feet, petaled with light. |