Night Swim at Shadow Lake
- Night Swim at Shadow Lake
I can barely swim, but I don't tell them that.At the beach, the brothers joke about leecheslonger than my hand. They strip
and hoot with pleasure as they leap offthe slick rock. I keep my underwear on,feel my way in, the rocks becoming dirt
then a soft sucking silt. Without my glasses,the lake surface gleams, oiled with stars.Someone told me once to imagine the water
holding me up to the air, buoyant,but all I do is sink. The lake's long fingersplug my ears, grip me like a hand closing.
Panicked, I plash back to the shallow muckand wait. In the car back to the farm,I sit with towel stuffed between my legs.
No one tells any jokes. In the tensedsilence, I realize they'd meant for meto take off all my clothes. I roll down
my window, let in the night and its shrillinsect trills, its sharp slaps of wind. My entire life,I have been afraid of the wrong things. [End Page 135]
Anni Liu is the recipient of a 2018 Katherine Nason Bakeless Scholarship to Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference and the inaugural Undocupoets Fellowship. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Journal, Third Coast, The Margins, The Arkansas International, and elsewhere.
