Aquanaut

The cool water splashed over me as I dropped
into the crowded swimming pool
and sank to the bottom,
hugging my knees, the soft light squiggle on my pale legs
and on the pool’s floor as I sat,
a school of bubbles dispersing and popping above me.

I kicked off and spread my arms and legs out,
and watched a girl in a zebra-striped bikini bottom kick above me,
and blurry people in colorful swim trunks play before me,
and distant arms and legs wade around in the
dark blue gloom that swum
away from me, across the stretch of
shifting water, on which the hazy sunlight
lanced through in tendrils.

My chest pushed through the clear thickness,
hovering above the shadow it cast on the smooth floor,
and I tucked my limbs together behind me
to float my body through the pool.

And then I got out, blinking drops out of my eyelashes
and shivered in the warm air.