THE POOL | DAVID MOHAN We met in a swimming pool — the one between the Chinese takeaway and the supermarket just off Main Street. It seems a strange place to meet someone, I admit, but I couldn’t help but notice you doing lengths. Strange to think the first time I saw you, you had shining blue skin. We spoke afterwards in the dressing room, we kissed that evening, we dated the next day, we moved in the following week. Then two months later you died, end of story, except I kept going to our swimming pool every Thursday night, just the same as usual. It’s a comfort, I suppose. When you pass through the ankle spa you can hear a sound like birds’ wings hammering against ceilings. Voices take flight against panes of glass. It blocks off noise elsewhere. And when you step into the pool you can’t help but relax. Blue water re-assembles you. Your body breaks up and re-aligns with each step. The water accepts each foot, creeping up the shins to the knees like a pair of icy socks. The pool re-dresses you with itself. That’s truly what it’s like. Your dry skin comes alive at its touch. Eventually, your ears shout as you go under. Your ears glug back water, lock-keep sound. And, of course, this is why I go there every Thursday — to lose myself in another element. Our days spent in oxygen are abstract and diffident, but in Mediterranean blue water you can become something new, like a bud unsheathing its dead calyx in the spring. When I visit our pool I absorb myself in being absorbed, in staying afloat, in doing furious lengths. After a while it is all about pitching my strength against the weight of water. I can see nothing besides flashes of white air and blue water between strokes. I can hear nothing but my own breath, the clop of water against my ears. I punch and punch, letting my arms melt, never meeting my antagonist. Afterwards, I walk home with damp hair, the smell of chlorine on my skin. I feel cool and new in the evening air. And when I lie down on my bed I still carry the feeling water brings. If I concentrate I can store it in my mind like a bowl of water kept behind my eyes. I lie still in my bedroom after each Thursday swim. Traffic is always moving somewhere outside my window, and as I breathe the quiet in my room, the feeling I find in the pool dissolves as surely as water drips from trees after rain. David Mohan is an Irish poet and short-story writer based in Dublin. He came second in the 2009 Sean O’Faolain International Short Story Award. He won the 2008 Hennessy/ Sunday Tribune New Irish Writer Award. He blogs at davidmohan.wordpress.comhttp://davidmohan.wordpress.comshapeimage_1_link_0
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