Every summer weekday my sisters and I rise at six, ready to race. I shower, dry my hair, wind it round a curling iron, apply makeup, pull on my team suit (maroon and white wide vertical stripes) and a sweatshirt because the temperature hovers near sixty. I’m sixteen, infatuated with a lifeguard who might glimpse my radiance before I dive in, obliterate all that prep. Sure he has a girlfriend I can’t compete with, but what I imagine more than sates. Lap by lap we sprint freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly. Breaststroke my favorite—pull water down, back toward my body with fingers fused, perfectly partnered with the whip kick which thrusts me into the glide, the turn where I push off the wall, slice through just below surface, motionless, arms extended, hands like rudders. Eternal as any goddess, my body vibrates, pools with all swimmers back through time to Stone Age paintings on cave walls, until I splice with water, find the seam to enter its inner chamber.

-Karen George