I Used To Get Ear Infections
Jessica June Cato
Chronic. Jumped in pools all wrong. Back when summers lasted months, not weeks. Swimming deep was never a problem, only points of impact. When I broke the surface, I brought my tension with me. My fault. Stayed under forever. Deep as the concrete cared to dip. No one could reach me down there. Nothing could touch me. Sweet dissociation. I tanned through a bathing suit once. Wore flowers to bed for weeks. Popped my fingers underwater. Heard them snap like metal. Fanned my hair out like a dandelion. Weightless. Imagined I was somewhere else.
Water was a portal and a place. A god offering quiet respite. Our bodies are mostly water. Some days my skin was in the way. I wanted to melt into it. Engulfed. Overtaken by unthinking oneness. I was supposed to stay down there. Watch the surface fracture sunlight, the sky swirl in dimples above me.
