Flood

The inches of rain burst like ink over
the low places and everyone swam
in analyses of themselves in their own broad strokes
as if they'd never seen water or bodies.
(small boys and their father, hands up – you try
and take them to the pool...;
teenagers, swim suits slacking around breasts
like a bored hand; an older sister –
hair hydrated upwards
as the body moves away from the surface –
having given into the velocity
of being at one point against her
boyfriend’s chest and the next
headed straight for the murky lawn
of the retention pond, a throwing that
I recognize as he throws her.
Here I am writing about myself again
while the girl stays aquarium-faced –
the pressure of the solid-looking film over the water
having briefly loosened for her, frozen
yard waste floating at her kneecap,
only to get paused mid-pencil-dive
in the water where I’ve kept her, thinking of my own
understanding of pressure -
how exertion creates heat for the body
so that one can be in water colder than the air,
and the skin - its repositories of sun
collected through seasons of sun like a jar of coins,
and the campfire collected
in the follicles, not lost but shed purposefully -
some kept still in the epidermis, the dermis,
the hypodermis, some layer other
than blood or bones - this rousing
of ember and ray through pores through breath
into water until the water is convinced
to warm the body back like a mutual
handing over of gifts. Ambassador, she's convinced
the water of it, now back -
as lungs unfold pain down the chest like a long scratch -
to the boy on the grass - arms folded,
laughing at her body's talent for immersion -
whom she understands in this exact way
as another unavoidable plan of action.