on rule breaking and swan dives.

The stain against the pool floor hadn’t been a body at first, or at least, it hadn’t from where I’d been sitting in a lifeguard stand over the deep water, the slow press of fatigue pulsing behind my sunglasses, and even though I still think about it sometimes, all I can think about now is how goddamned hot the afternoon is, going on four o’clock, two more hours of burning in the blinding slant of late August sun––the dog days I guess it’s called, though I’ve never really followed star signs or anything to know quite why that is––when the empty blare of another guard’s whistle, her half-hearted yell at a kid booking it over wet concrete by the “3 foot” marker, reminds me unsolicited of this time last year, that day of the eclipse when we were all shielding our eyes and watching (even though NASA and our supervisor told us not to) the celestial magic-act of the sun and the moon becoming one, feeling like something omnipotent even as I turned my eyes away, neck stiff, and looked down into the shallows a moment like my contract made me promise to, my eyes swimming with shadows even as they settled on the one remaining still, coming into focus through the smell of overgrown grass and chlorine tablets and spray-on sunscreen and melting freeze pops and baking, blistering skin, to reveal what might have been someone’s lost towel or rash guard but I knew was too stiff, too heavy to be either, and as I watch the runner now finally catch air, eyes wide and awestruck like some inverted Icarus, amidst that other guard’s whistles, I hear my own screaming through the ecliptic silence, the paralyzed call for the backboard as I rushed to the water nothing more than a futile attempt for control as the moon moved on and the summer blinked to a close.