FREE-DIVE

She comes to me

when swimming in the Lido:
her body captured in thin white rubber,

membrane over her skin, legs monofinned,
a metamorphosis from woman to Cetacean.

She covers the length of the pool with a child’s
breath fixed in her lungs, resistant to new air.

What can I offer this strange creature whose
slowed heartbeat is the opposite of mine?

She leaves me to drift below

mind lulled into slow-wave sleep; for the sound
of the men, up above, becomes a ripple of my voice,

a distant echo she can no longer hear.

Christopher Linforth is the author of three story collections, The Distortions (Orison Books, 2021), winner of the 2020 Orison Books Fiction Prize, Directory (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2020), and When You Find Us We Will Be Gone (Lamar University Press, 2014).