While I wait for my niece to finish her shift
at the Y, I notice a boy who hugs his knees in the center
of the pool deck. He’s maybe eleven, well-
muscled, pale. He glances at the high dive;
edges to the shallow end. A long pause.
He steps into the water, stands stiff, shuts his eyes,
inhales, arches his spine, stretches backward,
floats…for a moment. When his chin slips
to the surface, he flails like a bird caught
in barbed wire, lunges to the ladder,
pulls himself out. Kids his age are swimming laps.
Three girls glide, faces up, lips puckered. He stumbles
to a corner, studies the palms of his hands
as if they contain a secret message. His gesture
resembles mine on my seventeenth birthday
when my father told me I would never learn to swim.
I meander to the other side of the pool,
mention to the kid how I’m no swimmer either.
He stares at me, trembles, looks at his feet.
I say swimming isn’t the biggest thing in the world.
What’s with you? he mutters. Listen, I say,
I’m scared to death of water
but I once carried a mother and baby girl
down five flights of a burning high-rise.
Really? he asks. Really and truly, I answer.
Things even out, I say. He wipes his eyes,
ponders me, heads for the showers.
"The Biggest Thing in the World'" is published here with kind permission of the author.
The ALL Review is pleased to present our How to Live series, poems chosen to help readers navigate these difficult and rapidly changing times.
