October 4, 2006

The River

I hate the smell of bleach on skin.
I almost cannot swim in pools for the chlorine.
I much prefer the smoothly rippling river,
Where you must watch for fishhooks and the men come around twice a day
To empty the nets. I like to ride the waves their boats make.
Even more, I love to float in limbo, quiet, and hearing my own breathing.
It is deep, and I can trace it.
I follow it, in through my nose, my chest expands, my diaphragm drops,
Down my windpipe, spilling into the bronchi, then into vessels
Full of blood and oxygen, and mixing with sugars.
Shivers bolt through me like liquid ice in my veins.
It is the breathing of a person
Who is ignoring that their temperature is slowly dropping.
My feet are numb, five feet below the water, in the center of the river
That runs down from the mountain.
I hang suspended, sharing a womb with more creatures than I can count.
I listen to the tinkling, swishing, chirping noise that Nature makes.
There is life around me, and I am life, I am the very essence of life.
Bleach kills. But I like to feel the cool slide of fish on my legs
And watch the tiny shelled creatures draw their lines in the sand.
I sink lower and feel the biting coldness against my eyelids,
And I breathe out, out, out
Thinking, what I don’t like about bleach isn’t actually the smell on skin,
It’s how it takes away one’s own smell.
I like the way I smell. I smell like clean, salty air, like a sea breeze,
And I smell of the warm, spicy smell that women have.
It says,
I am here, and I play, and I breathe, and I love, and I work, and I write,
And I swim, and I sweat, and I laugh and I sigh and I am alive.
I have the desire for life that some have for lovers.
I live enough for the little ones who can never be of me,
And I am happy now, even carrying that.