I.
Her people have a complicated relationship to large bodies of water.
It’s something the brownest shouldn’t have been forced to travel
through
and something the whitest hadn’t seen until the mid-20th century.
It’s something the middle-class book a Best Western by
for their children to visit on slow summer weekends.
It’s something the working-class leave at 7 a.m. with two coolers of
food that need
to last the day, cuz there’s only money enough to buy one soda
per person
and since this will more than likely be the only day in six months or
more the adults get a “vacation,” they stay. The Whole. Day.
II.
Helene’s white mom and fair-skinned sister would burn
being anywhere outdoors all day. She had seen the angry
blistering at Bass Lake when the sun would shift and halt
through the shade of the pines. She’d had forgotten all about that
until, almost by accident, she found herself
at Steilacoom beach 25 miles south down I-5.
Perched on a low craggy stone wall, H watches skinny-ribbed,
shirtless children get stopped by their red-haired, sun-bonneted
mother, legs sprouting from the petals of a white bathing suit cover.
The glowing hands of the mother slather and smear protection
on the squirmy bodies of the boys before they race
goose-fleshed back into the waves.
H came alone, drawn heedlessly, as if the water were calling.
She’d picked up a coffee and four cookies
from the vegan panadería, then just kept driving.
Warm coffee balanced on her knee, H forgets
how she’s supposed to feel in the face of the water;
forgets to think on anything other than the bipolar lapping
of the tide. Aggressive and loud, pounding the rock edges,
then gentle and quiet, licking folks’ toes.
You’re a fickle beast, H says out loud to the water,
knowing anything she says will be swallowed
immediately. The water takes what’s theirs.
That much is clear.
III.
While Helene looks at the water, she realizes that it
is all water. Not as in separate from sand and rocks
and crabs, but all water is water.
Not geographically this water is connected to other bodies
of water, but this water is that water, that water is this water.
The water in the Sound, the water in Bass Lake,
the water in the Ohio River, the water from her bathroom faucet,
water spurting uncontrollably from a fire hydrant.
It is all water. And when she whispers
See you later, to the water at the beach, she means
that she will return to the beach, but also that she and
the water will revisit one another at the fountain
in the square, in the kitchen tap, in the sweat
that beads on her brow as she walks back to her car.
IV.
If all water is water, Helene considers, unlocking
the door of her Toyota, what else is whole
and omnipotent? Is grass grass? Ants ants?
Stone stone? Leaves leaves? Is abuelita abuelita
abuelita? Certainly the sky is sky, H thinks,
face turned upward. That much is clear and has always
been clear. Clear as the crystalline of the clouds
which are clouds, everywhere clouds.
