Lake
By Eva Millay Evans
Maybe it’s
how she escapes Nathan.
Jumping into where the turtles breed,
knowing that
up there
is boys
and life
but down here
is a realm not unlike darkness.
a seaweed-sleep
that murmurs and stings
with the sounds of motorboats
running through the rocks
or maybe
it is how she travels
when the car is an animal that does not move,
she closes her eyes in the mud of the shallow
and she is suddenly in China
or Bali
or death,
and she will burst from the water
at any point,
her eyelids glazed like a risen angel,
and she will slowly squeeze her teeth open
to whatever new continent,
whatever new realm this surfacing has brought.
or maybe it is how she transforms.
when the ambulance first took
her father away.
when the cancer grew like barnacles
in his stomach, and she plunged
into the deep unknown,
freezing life in its place.
when the motorboats stopped
jutting past her.
when the town board sat like fish with their mouths open,
as the algae bloom ate away
at the water
and hungry inch by inch,
closed down the beach.
Or maybe it is just a
lake.
a lake, with a sign that says
“Don’t swim here anymore.”
Where the boys come and dare the other
To eat a lump
of the old green mush,
Where a girl sits at the edge of the dock,
Throwing rocks
into its big blue holes,
Waiting for the town
to say
that she can swim again.