the water never scared me but the boys
Jennifer Hambrick
had something about them I wasn’t allowed
to have. that summer I met a guy at the pool.
a friend knew someone who knew him so
they knew each other and so I knew him too.
my friend and I hung out at the pool a few days
in a row, laying out in bikinis on towels
and pretending not to care while we watched him
banter with some guys. he came over to us
now and then and knew when to leave
to make me want him to stay. there was
something in my mind back then about
the girls who met guys at the pool. they took
the musk of sweat and suntan oil and scant
clothing and full bodies and budding desire
with them beyond the chain-link fence
to parked cars, to the dark under bleachers,
to basement rec rooms when their parents
weren’t home. in my mind they let those guys
do all kinds of things to them lying down
on the floor with the dark all over them
and ending up pregnant and dropping out
of school and working at the shop-n-save
and chain smoking their lives away. I wasn’t afraid
of drowning, probably because of the lifeguards.
he walked me home from the pool one day,
down the long street, cutting through the church
yard, my hair half wet and frizzed and bleached
from sun and chlorine. now I know he hid
his nerves behind a mask of raw abandon
and his hands rushed for my hips and a crackle
of fear surged inside when his mouth found mine
and that day as the sun burned us I let him do it.