breaststroke backstroke
you come in from the cold sloshing
puddles in your too-big boots but you’re naked
in no time, gangly limbs slipping quickly
into lycra. flip flops forgotten again, your feet prune
to match the drain grate in the middle
of the floor, only softer. you are so soft,
smacking along wet tiles with your towel
and your goggles. in the shower you’d like to glance
around, but you cast no lingering looks in that
dimly-lit chamber spilling over with steam and chlorine
from hissing shower heads that only run for a few seconds
anyway. girls ask for help putting on swim caps and your hands
fumble; you’re all wet when you come out on deck and giddy
to dive in. the pool is a two-way mirror: you can ogle in goggles
at bums underwater, but wiggling and flailing won’t land you in the meet.
the coach says “be a dolphin!” but you’d rather be a sloth—
sloths can hold their breath for 40 minutes; dolphins 10.
you can’t do one length, but there’s nowhere you’d rather be
on a Wednesday. some girls here look like water striders,
slim and gliding—you can never keep up. you are literally treading water
and that’s the best part of practice: when everyone is stuck
heads bobbing bodies undulating under the glassy surface,
staying afloat. but what if you pretended you couldn’t? what if
you splashed, gasping? who would give you mouth to mouth?
back in the change room the grade 8 girl is wrapped in a towel
when you walk over and offer her gum. you never look below the neck—
change rooms are full of eyes. the girl accepts the gum with a bubbly
lilting thanks, and then your moms pick you up. at home you float
in the tub, and the tub feels bigger than the ocean, and you
overflow the tub because you’ve changed the taste in that girl’s mouth.
Hannah Karpinski is a queer reader and writer who lives in Montreal but often floats back to Toronto, where she's from. Her work has appeared in publications like Bad Nudes and Lemon Hound, and she is one of the founding editors of Ossa Magazine.
Note: This poem was previously published in Hannah’s chapbook, Beach Seasons (April 2018)