Liz Ahl
POOL THERAPY
At ninety degrees, the pool’s therapeutic—
like massages are therapeutic when gloved
in particular formalities, in particular offices,
and therefore covered by insurance, if you’ve got it.
This pool’s not echoing with marco polo, not at all
limpid or stimulating or frothing full of sirens
or mermaids. A staircase with two railings descends
into the aquamarine, and I take it step by step,
these ruined knees pressed down by this fat old body until
I’m all the way inside the chlorine-scented bath—
and buoyancy’s miracle welcomes my angry bones,
soothes them out of friction. The heat coaxes
a kind of release, as if steam could carry off
all that is stuck and stiff and swollen. For half an hour,
I step and bend as commanded, one side to the other,
then a few laps across the deep end, and finally,
back to the stairs. As I emerge, what was borne away
comes slamming back; a physical and maybe therapeutic cruelty
I forgot to brace for, steam turning to hot lead,
me somehow heavier than I was when I entered the waters.
Your body is your burden, the air asserts,
and I drag it, this waterlogged corpse rolled in a carpet,
back into the influence of my planet’s true gravity,
this old pain with its new name.