She liked the way the water suspended her. The way it was strong enough to cradle her but still malleable to her touch. This was a world that she manipulated. She could kick, claw, push and bat at the water around her and it never let her fall. Even when she ventured out into the river, it’s most violent tantrums were like the outbursts of a close friend. Expected. Tolerated. Comforting almost, to know the tells and the phases of such a fragile thing. But in this pool, the water was silent. Not saying a word to her as she dove underneath and made a clean slice through it with her arms. 1 lap and she surfaced for air. 12 laps and she let her muscles take a break. It’s sort of poetic, really she thought, the way I’m covered in it even when I leave the pool. How it changes me. She let her feet rest on the bottom and ran her fingers through her long blond hair. It’s slight green tint that she hadn’t bothered to worry about or alter. She held her pruned fingers out in front of her and laughed at the canyons and mountains residing there. She traced them down her shoulder. It’s odd how water has the same effect as old age, she thought it’s a little poetic, isn’t it? She liked everything to be poetic. It made things matter to her. Most things that she encountered or experienced would incite her to a poem, either in her head or written down later. She had journals full of them. They catalogued life in a way that made sense to her. She swam another set of laps and then pulled herself out of the pool. Pulling her keys off the hook, she slipped her thin arms through the sleeves of her sweatshirt and let the excess water run races down her legs into pools around her feet on the floor. She shook off the drops that clung to her legs, wiped them from her face and wrung them from her hair, leaving behind much of what she had taken. The pool was still and tranquil just as it had been before she disrupted it. The drops that had taken residence with her hair and in her ears were not missed; their absence was not noted. She noted it however, although she couldn’t see a difference in the level of the water. She wondered how many things she thought about that never even began to bury their way into anyone else’s brains. How many poems had she written about things few people ever saw. Was that poetic? She decided it was and slipped out the door, locking it behind her. Her engine growled in indignation when she started up. She imagined that maybe it was angry at having been left for too long unattended. The radio blared songs that sounded like memories and she breathed clear and exhaled long as she drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. She pounded out a beat sloppy and unskilled as the wind played tug of war with her hair. Everything in opposition, but her mind was at peace. It felt like a poem. Someone watching this could see her and think “my, isn’t that poetic? This young beautiful girl with her hair in the wind and her hands on the wheel” She often did things as though someone was watching her, even when she was by herself. It gave mundane things purpose. She sang along to impress the empty seat beside her. Everything felt in order for her on nights like this. The world is poetic she thought. Everything about it. Even the sad parts. Maybe them especially. Everything has a poetic aspect, they teach us something or make us feel something. Isn’t that what we all search for? To feel something significant? She smiled to herself as she pulled into her driveway. She was feeling plenty.The orchestra of the crickets screaming in the dark blended together with the screaming of her car telling her she left the keys in the ignition and she retrieved them quickly and ran inside. She shared a small apartment with a girl she knew from work. It was nothing fancy. The type of place that you tell people is “ just temporary until you get back on your feet”. It suited them fine. The wire on the balcony to hang clothes to dry. The light in the kitchen never seemed fully illuminated. The shower that ran cold if the kitchen sink was on at the same time. The cracks in the floor and the scuffs on the walls made them feel like struggling adults. As though these flaws in the landscape made their simple life somehow heroic. They taught swim lessons together at the local pool and swam on the same team. Last year they had made it to state. Her butterfly almost took them to Nationals. This year it would, guaranteed. Her roommate was an olive skinned girl with a tangle of curls that took a fair amount of managing to fit under her swim cap. She was the type of roommate that you know things about, and do things with, but never truly feel attached to. They never talked about much of anything except for swimming: critiquing the other girls on the team; the girls from meets they had attended; the coaches; the constant dampness of their bathing suits. It was comfortable. Everything about this life she had constructed was reassuring. A poetic routine, requiring little effort and almost no uncertainty. Dead bolt, chain, doorknob lock. She kicked off her shoes and inhaled the leftovers of easy mac and the open bottle of wine on the counter top.
“Don’t you ever put this stuff away after you eat?” She chided
“I was leaving it out to see if you wanted any, god”
She laughed apologetically “ Oh, well then thanks.”
“ No problem, how was your swim?”
She had gotten so close to beating her time tonight. Tied it 4 times in a row. Her hand pulling out of the water to hit the stop watch on the edge of the pool. Her fingers rocketing water drops through the air and her lungs pulling in oxygen, rough and frantic. She was so close. Another few nights of hard swimming like tonight and she would have it.
“Great. Almost beat it”
Tomorrow she would go to the river. Practicing in the choppier water would condition her even better. The current that was feared by most was a coach for her. Pulling her toward her goal.
“god, you’re something else. Isn’t it enough to be the star of the team?” she laughed in that way so the listener doesn’t really have to make a decision about how to react to the statement that has been made.
“I’ll get it this week for sure. “
She thought it was poetic how they didn’t really answer each others questions when they talked. It was as though they were holding separate conversations on their own, but taking turns speaking. Neither person was necessary to the outcome of the other’s train of thought.
Walking to her room, she twisted her hair into a high bun and secured it with an elastic. She sometimes wondered why she kept her hair so long. It certainly wasn’t an efficient addition. It was always wet, always tinged slightly green, always a struggle to keep it under her swim cap. In ways it was the only thing she held onto that wasn’t devoted to swimming. Her body was conditioned for it, her life was planned for it. Her hair was her rebellion and even so, it was effected by the water, brittling with chemicals. Poetic, she thought, how it seeps into everything. Wasn’t that how she liked it? She changed into a tank top and oversized sweatpants leftover from a relationship gone sour. She had a drawer full of sweatpants and t-shirts several sizes too large from schools she hadn’t attended and sports teams she wasn’t a part of. She liked to hold onto the things she had lived through. It was poetic to hold onto things. Not in a depressing way, or to pine for things that had been lost. Simply because she saw her life as a whole. Not as segments to be forgotten or discarded. It was one. It was seamless and she liked to keep all the threads around her. Starting over was dull and exhausting, she preferred to continue from where she had left off.
“Oh my god you have to come in here this is so weird”
“one second…”
She scuffled into the kitchen and poured herself a plastic cup full of wine, finishing off the bottle. She took a long sip and pressed her tongue to the top of her mouth to try and avoid the aftertaste. It didn’t work. This wine was like an old friend, whom you like for a while, but then they begin to turn sour. However, the convenience store by your house only has two types and one of them is out of your price range so you keep buying it.
“what is it?”
She was braiding her dark curls into a long side braid and she looked up.
“Huh?”
“You told me to come in here, goof, what’s so urgent?”
“Oh watch this news story, it’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”
She rewound and hit play.
Mayor Henderson passed away today due to an unfortunate accident. While eating with his family, he choked on a bite of his meal at Chuck’s Burger Palace . His wife had gotten up to use the restroom and his children had gone to the counter to exchange their happy meal toys. The French fry lodged in his windpipe and he was unable to breathe. The funeral is scheduled to be Friday at 4 p.m. at Christ’s Calvary on 2nd and Chesnut. Please come support the family of our beloved Mayor. In other news, the elementary school will be putting on their annual presenation of …
“isn’t that insane? I mean no one likes that bastard, but still, to die at Chuck’s Burger Palace? God, how embarrassing. It’s so ironic”
She pulled at her tank top and tried to readjust in her chair. Her stomach was revolting and she could feel it tensing up into her throat. She set her cup on the ground and stood on shaking legs.
“god you’re pale as a ghost. Was he related to you or something?”
“listen, I think I left my locket at the pool. I’m gonna go get it.”
“you’ll be there in the morning. Just get it then.”
“ I’ll be right back”
Her keys almost slipped from her sweating hands as she unlocked the deadbolt and the doorknob, slid off the chain.
Her mind was racing. Died in a Burger Palace? Where was the poetry in that. It was void of any kind of meaning. He wasn’t a lonely man choking in his apartment by himself. His family had been there. It wasn’t particularly sad, he hadn’t been a very good mayor, or particularly personable. Christ’s Calvary would be filled with family and the few politians who would appear ungrateful if they didn’t attend. Maybe his secretary would come. It wasn’t even ironic, the man hadn’t been particularly fat or thin, he hadn’t made any clever remarks about dying or food or Chuck’s Burger Palace at all. His death meant nothing. Except an alamony check for his wife who didn’t particularly need it and a few poorly chosen counseling sessions for his children . Where was the poetry in that? How could this better the community or change the hearts of the family? How could it bring the city together, or teach some sort of lesson. It didn’t. except maybe not to take large bites if your wife is in the restroom. His death was only significant in that it was an inconvenience. Her head was spinning now and she sat down in her car with the keys in the ignition. How could she explain this. How could she make it important? Perhaps it was ironic that the throat he spoke out of to govern the city was the same throat that trapped a bit of his meal that ended up… she stopped short. It wasn’t ironic. It wasn’t sad. It wasn’t meaningful or a parable. It wasn’t a lesson and it was hardly even a story.
“look kids, this is a picture of your uncle Paul. He died from eating a hamburger.”
It wasn’t a good story, and it wasn’t even a story you could really tell without creating pathological fears of local burger joints for the listener. She turned the key and pulled out onto the highway. It wasn’t raining the way it should have been. Whenever you have an epiphany, it’s supposed to be raining. It’s poetic for the sky to cry when you are. She pulled off to the side of the road and walked slowly towards the bridge. For the last three years she had visited this bridge to cannonball into the water. In the summer it was in a bikini with a boyfriend or the girls on the team. In the fall and spring it was in a one piece speedo to shave another tenth of a second off her time. Her whole life had been a poem. She had made sure of it. What if she fell to the same type of fate as mayor Henderson? Void of meaning and void of beauty. Useless. Useless to her, useless to those around her. An uncomfortable utterance that is brushed off and suppressed. She couldn’t bear that thought. Her life was so beautiful. Her poems on her shelves in her apartment constructed with character and meaning. Her swimming, her hair, her old t-shirts, her thoughts too numerous to explain. She hoisted herself up to sit with her feet dangling over the water. It would all be reduced to a sentence. Maybe two. “She died from tripping down her stair when her date rang the doorbell” That was a story no one would even tell. “ she passed. It was an accident.” An accident. A life reduced to an accident.
She ran her fingers along the cold steel of the railing. There would be poetry in her death. It would be ironic. It would be sad. It would teach a lesson. She had to make sure of it and as she pushed herself off the edge of the railing into the arms of her familiar friend below, she did.
