Delineation of Light and Water

Inside the desire, it was like standing in a field of fluorescent

light. Everything was lit the same by my idea of you: the birds,

the grass, the sky. This was your importance: that you might

illuminate each thing equally. It was also like those summer

days when the heat outside seems to match exactly the heat

of my body, so that moving along I cannot tell where the air ends

and I begin. In truth, I am not outside the desire yet,

but imagine that it is like the time I was swimming laps

in Ventura, and a boy left his lane, dove to the floor of the pool,

and began swimming underneath me, slowly rising until his back

brushed my chest. Still swimming, my hands cutting through

the water around him, I stared down at the water-pale body

miming my own, and he turned his head upward toward mine

and grinned. We swam this way to the wall, turned, and kicked off

into different directions. There is nothing about your body

I miss, and yet staring down into the wavering water, I cannot think

of anything but its appearance, the finer fluency of its absence.

Copyright © 2006 Quinn Latimer All rights reserved
from The Greensboro Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission