SWIM

I left the cottage to swim.

The roses stayed where they were.

She had turned—

that’s how it was remembered—

but no one said into what.

They’ve always told it this way:

there was a garden once,

a place that held together

until it didn’t.

No one agrees where it was.

Only that it was.

In different places and different times, she appears—

in the sea,

at the shore among shells,

then back to the depths,

swimming gracefully in the open.

Swimming gracefully with the waves,

swimming in the tide.

No one agrees on what they saw.

Only that it stayed with them.

Different shores gave her different names.

The Greeks spoke of forms in the water,

not quite human, not separate either.

Along colder coasts,

they told of skins that could be shed and worn.

Elsewhere, she rose from deeper waters—

beauty and warning,

fortune and risk.

No single story holds her.

But the pattern does.

Something seen,

then felt,

then carried forward.

Maybe that’s all it ever was.

Not something to prove,

but something recognized—

when the world grows quiet enough

to notice.

So she returns,

again and again,

not to be kept—

but to be seen,

and gone.