I’m Trying To Remember How The Cold Water Felt

In these short days, the place becomes impossible. I cannot close my eyes and feel red glow through wet skin. I cannot feel cold water with any pleasure at all.

Knowing has never been feeling. But, I guess, what good are those. What I hear about faith is that it stands on neither.

What do you remember about the cold water?

I remember pain in my feet (first to feel). Pain in my hands (last to numb). Not the coldest I’ve felt, but the coldest I’ve stood.

Towards the back, where the river empties, it’s warmer. This doesn’t make sense because it’s deeper over there. I suppose it could just feel warmer, because you have to swim over there. But no, we all agree, over there is warmer.

I remember complete gracelessness. Belly laughing at the unbeauty of our bodies trying to participate in the scene. Never beautiful. Always bright.

Quite green it seems in sun, by the way. You would never see it without.

How may you feel again how the cold water felt?

I may close the door and bake myself flushed. On back, on wood floor, in underwear, begging to sweat.

I may push blunt and forgiving against fierce wind. I may carry a conversation. I may plant my hands in orange muck.

I may shake and shake and shake and shake and shake and shake and shake and shake, hoping the water will be cold enough to shock.

And if it’s not? And if it’s cool, but not cold? If it’s crisp and blue and bearable?

Then maybe I’d swim long enough to reach an island, and build a fort of tree limbs, and lie down onto wet moss, and paint myself grey, and know it’s time to return to the water when the air makes me shiver.

What will you do when the cold water hits you?

Smile.