The yellow light of the under-water lights
flickers like a fading sun,
masked in the bright blue.
The smell of the chlorine bites at her nose,
stinging cleanly.
She shifts on her cushion
of scratchy hotel towels,
naked feet tucked beneath her, dry,
as she keeps watch.
Nathaniel and John squeal and splash,
their sweet young faces marbled
by the light of the water
that ripples as they play fight.
Being older, and by nature, more cruel,
more prone to shows of might,
Nathaniel leaps in a cascade of flying
water beads to
drive his brother
beneath the surface.
Unwillingly submerged,
John’s blond curls fly free in the water,
brushing his tiny white face like wind,
suspended there.
And it is then she remembers, as she watches

those pretty blond curls he shared

with another who’d once hung in water,
though in a porcelain bowl with faucet
instead of a blue tiled swimming pool.
She could see this other’s face,
brazen always, brown-eyed
but grey in melancholy.
Tired eyes that, lidded,
swam in water
finally asleep.
Finally resting,
rid of the worldly Atlas weight
that was so dripping like the water, the
moist and liquid sadness, pooling,
puddling,
dripping,
splashing,
John cries out in anger,
flapping limbs,
and Nathaniel laughs,
strong and mean,
brown eyes turned a sinister black by the weird
reflections of the swimming pool.

Her red lips pop
with displeasure at their arguing,
and they turn to her with faces so familiar,
attentive and ashamed.
The water licks at them,
a cool temptation,
swallowing their flesh
in a way that makes her both fear
and fall to envy.
Her own skin,
white and airy,
though too meticulously perfected to drip,
thirsts for the water’s cold tongue.
But instead she keeps a
dry watch
carefully over two little ghosts.