Life Underwater

Somewhere

between the time of her two dislocations,

she lost count of the days when she

did not speak to outsiders,

only remembered that

in third grade, she was told she only

had a limited number of words

in her lifetime, and was warned not to waste them.

It was that summer when she lived in an apartment

because the new house was growing mold

and making everyone sick.

The new house was made of dark greens and blues

(the owners had a hangover and couldn’t stomach pastels),

but the apartment was pure cirrus white

as the day it was painted.

She slept on a bed with a quilt

that stole its pattern from the Hilton,

and blinds that refused to keep the light out,

so she moved into the hallway after sunrise,

that windowless hallway that could be closed off

from the living room, and lay next

to the washing machine in the comfortable chill

of the air conditioner, (I’m always told

that my room is too cold.)

She makes long distance calls with her saved words

and complains that the South is encased

in a cumulonimbus, always crackling with lightning

in the late afternoons and into the night,

that there’s always a tornado living in the sky,

always a hurricane lurking in the Caribbean,

(the morning after Frances, she walked out

in her bare feet and pajamas to see how much

the canal had flooded, surveying the downed

trees as the wind whipped at her,

but that was already two years later.)

The complex had a pool, toxic blue

that drenched the air with chlorine,

and she needed a way to pass the time between speaking,

so they made an understood contract,

if just for the summer.

So she made the commitment,

she walked across the complex in the bubbling afternoon heat

and heavy evening humidity,

past the little cat who had an owner

but followed her anyway,

and she drifted from shallow to deep,

never venturing underwater until she bought

goggles from the nearby sports store, because

it would only be frustrating if she couldn’t see.

She laid across the bottom as long as her

limited lungs allow her and watched

the perpetual rainfall ripple across the

shivering surface, courting electrocution

as the sky grew darker and the thunder

crackled outside, but she pretended to be

as deaf as the water. (While Frances

raged outside, her mother told her that

hurricane winds are so strong, thunder

and lightning do not exist inside them.)

August. The contractors still beating away

at the mold, she started high school

that’s wrapped in orange and yellow tape, (even

looking out my window, I see machines

digging meaningless ditches),

and she wondered if it would be a betrayal

to exist there, (she exists, but not as long

as she’d like). She doesn’t have enough

saved words left to make a long distance call

and complain about the empty green of a

Southern autumn. The downpour had tapered

off, but she did not notice until she absently

looked up one morning and was followed all day

by the sun’s dark purple spot.

(Today is the third day of rain, and I

don’t hear voices, or laughter, or

the sound of feet across the ground.

All I hear is that rhythmic splash

and patter against the windows,

the sound that swallows everything.)