Treading Water

Old summers lick
with the scent of chlorine,
aloe and spf 15,
with our hands
in the plastic house
where we save them,
took in half drowned
bugs and lizards,
dolls with dog-chewed faces
and missing limbs.

We smell like oranges,
coconut and beach.
We eat fruit with wrinkled lips
and fingers cut by the trees
I scaled for treats,
their waterlogged sugar tasteless.
We dry in patches
with stiffening hair,
our limbs moving slowly,
disjointed,
and too smooth,
as if believing still
weÕre underwater.

Afternoons the sand scrapes
between bathing suits and skin.
Held in one hammock,
our breathing brushes
sunburned shoulders
against each other.
We fall asleep seasticky,
sucking salt from our hair.

I bought you swimming pool toys
with under couch coins,
plastic oysters
with weighted pearls,
and watched your legs,
decapitated,
churning currents.
Your face squinted tight,
nose pinched,
chasing the clink of concrete
as the oysters I threw
dove to the deep end.
I fell back
from the steel stepladder,
again and again,
eyes open
watching the sky
waver under the water
and dreaming of what itÕs like to drown.