POEM A DAY 5: 80 lengths ÷ 12 dollars = x
By Almeda Glenn Miller
for BA
We push off the side of the pool and spear our bodies through the water, eyes like whale eyes, our ancient selves. We mix up our strokes – fly, back, breast, free. I can’t do math, can’t do numbers, just words, so she adds up how much we’re paying for each length we swim. We swim through her moods, my insecurities, our darker sides while some people in the world breathe sorrow. During our warm down, mirroring stroke for stroke, our smiles as broad as twelve year olds playing tea party on the bottom of the pool, our hair floating above us, bubbled promise escaping our lips, our covenant with each other a simple algebra of extraordinary acts. In the locker room, others get tired just watching us argue. She has gotten so good at questions and I’m not that good at answers so we circle around our best ideas. She wags her finger in the air and pronounces that we’ll all be okay. She checks in with me on this. “Right?” she nods, her eyebrows arched, “all of us. We’ll all be okay.” “When did being okay become okay?” I say. Standing naked, toweling off her hair, she says, “We paid six cents per length today.”
Almeda Glenn Miller is a Rossland based writer, performer, and teacher.
