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.
