Like a parable or a past participle
we had been naked in the lake
near where those two girls had died. That same
summer standing in line for an ice cream,
a friend of a friend who knew them said so.
So. What to say except that the lake was shallow
at first and we went in at a run, flapping
our ankles like two heavy birds bobbing
a runway out of water. That we had known
each other’s tendons as a launch. Our arms
were pinning our breasts—you had breasts,
then. On the ascent, we dripped past those
who had seen us naked. It was funny and fleeting:
nothing, not even death, could encompass all
that lay between our bodies and the world.
It was summer and the smell of algae claimed
us, even sorry and still at this parallel loss
delivered to us on a streetcorner in Portland. The city
was someone we knew, then. But the lake was inside us.