The Plunge

A friend I haven't seen in a while comes over for cake.

I've made carrot with cream cheese, lemon with glaze.

I want to be a woman who's done something,

who's made something with the

time she has.

I listen while my friends talks. My eyes track the waning slices on the faded red plate, shaped like a crescent moon, or a mouth.

Inside of a pause, I ask if she'd like to go outside.

It is early January, cold and bright.

The pool feels to your limbs like the river where boys swim, in summer.

I tell her something men have told me:

good for you, mood boosting, inflammation gone

But in my mind I am thinking only

animal, alive, together.

In matching one-pieces, we walk across the moss-slick tile

past the wilting Dalia stalks my mother planted,

and the stiff rosemary my partner twists and crushes in his hands

for a stew.

My friend's legs are precise, thin, and straight-stepping.

Mine are swollen and pendulous,

thick and scared of being seen

on land.

I open the pool a quarter way, so the brown cover looks like an eyelid, mostly dreaming.

Swiftly, I leave my friend on the tile and submerge into the still waters,

like Khaleesi into a pyre, or like I've heard some parents will

join their dying children in the grave,

expressionless and solemn, sure of their direction.

As always, I say to the dark water, my warmth is bigger than your cold; my life is bigger than your death,

As always, I wave along the memory of the boy who drowned in the river, in waters colder than this.

I didn't know him, but his death I remember somehow,

survives in me like a myth.

And then I think of the boy's father, who used to stand here next me, numb and determined,

who carried grief like a torch through our house

who ate the remnants of my cakes with his bare, calloused hands

when everyone else had gone.

When my back is blurred, I swivel to my friend,

who is still standing on the first step, panting,

wondering not so much how but when.

"You don't have to go in past your hips," I say. "Go slow."

But she arrives in one stride.

Grunting with the pain of shock, she faces me, outstretches her arms,

puts her hands on my shoulders, and claws

at my collarbone.

Her eyes become fingers too, holding onto mine.

I do what she does. My hands on her shoulders. My eyes on her eyes.

Fused together this way, we stand, doulas to each other's pain.

Inhale, exhale. I consider sharing my mantra, but don't.

I am reading a book where a woman named Martha guides others through childbirth.

She says it doesn't matter if they know each other well or not,

that pain renders everyone a novice to their own body,

and makes strangers familiar

This is not labor. We are not strangers.

But still, something shocking binds us;

Still, some distance I didn't know was there

closes in the cold.

Does she hear it? The question rises, breaks water.

Who does she think she is holding onto? Who am I to be held?

Any second now, I believe her hands will slip,

that I will disappear.

These are the cold waters I have plunged into. They shock me.

They threaten to pull me under.

That night, I picture the boy's father, before he left.

He is standing in the same pool, in the same morning cold by the same garden.

I want to go in and help. I want to, somehow, be the thing he's looking for.

Sometimes when I bake, I pretend a man who has lost everything--bereft beyond words,

alone beyond hands--is on his way, numb and dripping

from the cold, dark waters.

When I serve what I've made, I sometimes pretend I am cutting him a

large slice, pushing the red plate towards his strong, empty hands,

watching the cake part his silent, solemn lips.

I pretend I am giving something he needs.

I pretend I am the thing you can't get back, back.

I want to picture my friend instead.

A woman with arms outstretched.

Hands reaching towards shoulders towards hands.

Eyes open like palms.

At some point, my friend and I must have let go of each other.

I don't remember this part well--it was instinctive, unspoken,

subtle and instantaneous in the way a river,

splitting into two, is subtle and instantaneous.

A part of me must have mourned it, wondered if anybody would ever

reach for me again,

so simply, so sure.

But mostly I am grateful, and think now that, maybe,

what makes someone holdable, worth holding onto, is simply

someone reaching out

someone holding on.