When I jumped into the pool, I was not expecting to sink. Now, at the bottom, I wonder who I think I’m fooling.
This morning was a beautiful morning. This morning was such a beautiful morning that I was jealous. I wanted to feel beautiful too. So this morning I put on a gown. A gown made out of cheap pink silk, iron stained and torn, stuffed with pounds of rashy white tulle. A gown that’s too big on me, so big it slips off my shoulders and down my chest every two seconds but this morning I didn’t care. This morning I had the time.
I waltzed into my kitchen and made myself a drink. Black coffee and rosewater syrup, enough rosewater syrup that the drink was thick. So thick that it made me gag, it gurgled up and burned the back of my throat, but it also made me feel pink on the inside. With sticky fingers around the mug, I drank the strangling potion in gulps and gasps, letting it pour out the sides of my mouth and stain the silk, dark and sticky.
Filled with nectar I danced into my garden. I danced into my garden, dragging my gown and bare feet in the dirt and pretending the pebbles didn’t hurt, pretending the tail of my dress wasn’t ripping out the tender thyme I had planted months before when I was feeling motherly, when I was feeling like giving birth.
I twirled to the edge of my garden and caught sight of the pool. Unheated and blemished with rotted leaves and papery red petals from my neighbor’s bougainvillea. Bougainvillea is poisonous, my mother always warned me. She always warned me not to eat it, as if I, eager as a beetle, would fall for the seductive fuschia call of these littering plants. I caught sight of the pool and I postured, nearly on all fours, and took off into a sprint. The thorns on the rose bush caught me, tried to hold me back, but all they left were cat scratches on my thighs and more rips on my skirt. I sprinted and bloomed in the air, before crashing down beneath the bubbling surface.
Hugging myself with all the love I had, I rolled to the bottom. The skin of the pool is pierced by the sun, rays of light warbling among the blue in a geometric weave. From my seat, I can see the legs of struggling insects, nearly drowned. Insects I would have liked to scoop up into my palms and lay on the blistering concrete of salvation and watch the bugs bake dry. I would have liked to, but at the moment I can’t.
Because when I jumped into the pool, I guess I more expected I would float. I guess I more hoped it. But I sank like a stoner in an indica flu, sank in ways I’d never sunk before. And now the only things floating are the bugs. The drowning bugs and their helpless kicking legs that tickle and send ripples like creepy crawlies up and down my skin, even here in the deep end. And my hair, green and constricting like medusa’s into knots like the ones I used to rip out of my head as a child. And my gown, releasing the air it caught in small bubble fizzes, not in large, ballooning gasps like you might expect. And the tulle is floating up by my ears now, prettier in the water than it ever looked when I was dry. I imagine, now, they must make gowns at the bottoms of pools. The silk is shinier as well. It glistens like snakeskin, like rose syrup, like the face of the water.
I don’t think I could swim if I wanted to. It’s like getting out of bed in the morning: usually too hard, usually not worth the effort at all. In my dreams, I can sometimes breathe underwater. And I haven’t yet taken a breath, but I’m almost certain I could if I wanted to. I’m almost just as certain that I’ve been under here for a long time. I’m almost certain because in the morning, the sun is white. The sun is white and soft like the light is just barely breathing on you. Now it seems that above the surface in on fire. Past my green ceiling is a layer of orange, a dreadful, bloody orange. It makes me feel like I’m trapped under amber, waiting for it to harden, to turn me into a jewel I myself might like to hang from a silver chain around my neck.
This morning I woke up and heard the sounds of birds chirping and garbage trucks growling and grass growing. Now I hear nothing. I hear stillness. I hear the inside of my head humming like a seashell. And I’m getting frustrated. I’m beginning to feel stupid. Because who am I to jump into a pool and not come out?
Who are you, though, to expect me to try?
I will wait until the moon drifts overhead. It will be as full as the flowers tonight. The pool will purple and swell like a bruise and bulge towards the sky, and it will pull me up with it. But then it will be night and then I will surely be expected to sleep. Sleep is an annoyance, and I still haven’t gotten over the fact that I’m expected to do it every night. But down here, I have no expectations. Down here, I am preserved. Time has finally stopped for once. Down here I can idle in miming tea parties and practicing handstands and watching my fingers turn to prunes.
And my skin is blue and my blood is blue and when I jumped into the pool, I guess maybe I was feeling blue, too.