The first time we swim in a pool I am expecting a game of aqua-tag. My playful look of shock when you splash me. Our eventual coupling in the shallow end. My wet hair will shine like a sea mammal. Instead you swim laps like an olympian while I entertain myself with underwater handstands at the 4’ mark. I perfect my pointed toes and balance like this for what I consider an impressive number of seconds. Probably a personal record.
In the ocean on my birthday I am drunk and screaming at the sea to knock me over. The sea obliges and I am thrown and overturned in the sand and foam. I emerge each time as a newborn, shrieking with laughter. You may be watching from the shore. I may be showing off.
We go to Hawaii. We buy snorkels, masks, and flippers and I buy myself an unsinkable kickboard, but I still feel like I’m going to drown. It takes me all day to get out past the point where the rocks are scraping up my knees and by the time we’re finally following the same fish around, the sun is setting and I’m shivering. The second day I allow myself into the deeper water and tensely watch the scuba divers bubble by below and the schools of bright fish dart around in formation. I lose sight of you once in a while, and am overwhelmed by the great depth and by my smallness. I feel as though I’ll never see you again, or maybe as though you never existed at all.
The lake is low in August, like a dream I had once where the entire ocean was ankle deep and Caribbean blue. We wade out for what seems like miles and the water is still only up to our stomachs. When it reaches our chests you ask me to swim out with you. I decline. Instead I plant my feet against the slow waves and watch you make your way out, away from the giraffe spotted refractions in the sand in front of me and into the deeper blue.
Your figure. That familiar pink square of your back growing tinier in the blue distance. I think I see your hand shoot up and beckon to me one last time, but my glasses are on shore so I can pretend that I didn’t. When the water reaches your shoulders I see you pause, drawing a breath before you dive. You reemerge exultant.
I imagine what swimming must feel like to you. A rush of freedom, a triumph. Your body bending nature to its will. Even underwater, that cowlick of yours is, I assume, ever resilient.
We had once, years ago, raced toward the surf in February moonlight, most of our clothes left behind with our cackling friends. You sped ahead of me at first, and I willed myself to catch up to you. In the dark, you took your path for granted and the shelf of beach below you dropped off, dropping you with it, face first into the sand. Oblivious, I charged gleeful into the ocean, alone.