Forever

The water was so still

            I believed it would keep us

                        right-side up forever

there in that pool

            on a night so dim

                        it looked like the negative

of itself, with the friend

            I loved in high school,

                        a boy (I thought

they were a boy) who

            had also shed

                        their clothes and risked

the bare run into

            chlorine heaven, a place

                        that seems like a myth

to me now, where I felt

            no shame, our twin forms,

                        from far away,

naked mirrors

            of the other, bodies

                        we both lied about

every day, but that night

            I helped you shave

                        your legs for the first

time, soaping them

            and edging a cheap pink

                        razor up your calf, rinsing

sixteen years of

            growth in the wrong

                        direction down the drain,

listening to Karen Carpenter

            whimper from another

                        room, we’ve only just begun.