Night Swimming

It was supposed to be a dare

but when I saw his white body

against the dark of the night

I realised the cosmos never jokes.

I feared my body would glow like a firefly,

the dark beating against it like moths,

pulsating, vibrating with life.

It wasn't windy, nor cold, but

my hair stood on end;

I was already wet

so I jumped into the water

lest he would come close,

feel my breasts, my nipples, my sex.

I heard him jump off the pier

but I was too far out already,

the brisk water pitch black

sending fire in my veins,

and the stars broken by

the waves I was making

swimming in the milky way;

but which darkness it was

in which I was enveloped:

that of the cosmos, the lake, the night,

I couldn't say – but I was loved.

Behind me perhaps I heard my name

or was it an owl starting the hunt.

I couldn't but butterfly on.

Perhaps I didn't know who I was,

my parents telling me to get a grip,

my teachers saying that I was lost,

my friends whispering there was no hope,

but here and now I was myself –

a someone still to be explored –

but unmistakeably someone good.

The moon and the stars wiggled back

to where they had always been in the sky.

Motionless I lay, floating like a dead leaf;

muffled trees brushing the night

painting my fury, my pain, my joy;

luminous undisturbed dragonfly

stargazing its fleeting life away;

random waves hitting my body

and again, perhaps, my name.

I felt revealed and hidden,

naked but clothed by the waves,

the trees, the pebbles, the mountain,

its snowy cap a wedge in the darkness

opening a rift in the waters

swallowing me whole

eddying me away down

in some other, more distant gloom

the constellations spiralling

the fire inside raging, raging

against something dying

somewhere, deep down.

Perhaps it was the mountain dying,

perhaps it was me,

perhaps it was the lake and its shimmers,

the illusion that I was someone –

all I know is that I woke up

shivering in the abyss,

struggling to put my jeans back on.

I was soaking wet

and my nipples were hard

but he didn't try to feel my tits

when so many before him had;

he was dressing in silence,

perhaps eyeing me askance.

We didn't say a word on the drive home.

In fact, we never talked again.

I never went back to the lake,

I didn't go back to my house,

to my school or my home town

but on that night I became someone,

unmistakeably someone good,

somewhere I felt more at home,

somewhere I felt loved and desired,

somewhere people understood,

and recognised, the fire in my heart.