chocolate lake -- recently purified and no longer its eponymously muddy colour, but a startling, bright blue -- was warmer than the week before. groups of young men with small paunches were sitting on their shirts, laid out on the thick sand, drinking beer. groups of young women were flipping from their fronts to their backs, eating cheezies very slowly, peering around without sunglasses and without moving their necks. two little blond toddlers were running into, and out of, the still water.
the three of us rode our bicycles up the hill of purcell's cove road and propped them on a birch tree. i began taking off my pants as we walked past the rope-swing; michelle untied the straps of her dress. we slipped into the water quietly: there was no need for announcements or count-downs. our wants were simple and urgent and, for once, corresponded exactly with our needs.
the water was mottled -- milky, almost -- with pollen, fallen from the overhanging oaks.
her bathing suit strap dug into her pink goose-flesh, making two small mounds appear on either shoulder, swelling from the brown lycra bikini-valley. she cut through the water ahead of me, rising and falling like an inexperienced seal. we all, without planning to, lay on our backs to float when we reached the middle of the lake. looking up, every cloud looked like wings. (you'd always talked about your plans to be a bird-watcher upon retirement.)
remember, the way you live, every moment is material that can later be distilled, preserved, uplifted.
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