Swimming

Abstract

Swimming Kimberly Kruge (bio) SWIMMING If I drop this into the deep, will you dive down and retrieve it for me? My mother, at the community pool, a diadem of false pearls in her hair, is up to her shoulders in water. It depends on how. You know I'd. I will get lost. My face so different from the day before. My legs unrecognizably damaged. It is all happening at an alarming rate: loss. Somewhere between a lucid state and one that is elsewhere, I envision that my tendons separate from the bones. How will I tread water now? Right below the surface is a thought I've just dropped. I don't even try. Mother: everything is happening now at an alarming rate. Why couldn't I save myself from becoming deteriorated, [End Page 269] from watching as my mind was dragged down beyond reach. I can still see it there, but I don't know what it looks like— does that make sense to you? I would like to be able— I'd grasp the frail band fallen from your hair, if I weren't so sorry for myself. Last night I forgot to make you dinner, and when I looked over at the table there you were with water and a peanut butter sandwich. I could still see you there, but I couldn't tell what you looked like, and you could tell that I was there, watching you, but you couldn't see me. Does that make sense to anyone? I had never felt so much anguish as I did then; I used to know you, and you me, but I understand it now: too much of a good thing; too much life; too much creation; hypoxia; oversimplification. We are becoming nothing; it is not the other way around. I have to let this thought go or it will kill me, but [End Page 270] the thought will get away either way and still kill me. It will steal itself from me and steal the feeling of the dear way I held onto it too. Mother, I don't think we keep our crowns. We don't even keep our heads. [End Page 271] Kimberly Kruge KIMBERLY KRUGE is a poet and translator based in Mexico. She is the author of Ordinary Chaos (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2019) and High-Land Sub-Tropic (Center for Book Arts, 2017; Trans.: Impronta, 2019), which won the Center for Book Arts annual chapbook award. Her work has appeared in AGNI, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She founded and directs Comala Haven, a retreat and workshop in Mexico for women writers. Copyright © 2020 Kimberly Kruge