I see her bite marks 

on my feet after swimming

on my back through the lakes

both lackadaisically and pensively

I thought the pain was cramps

in my feet I paused and they drifted 

further down into the cold, nutrient richness 

of a place I, well, that grows more comforting. 

It means she likes you. 

It's a sign of good fortune.

A man told me at the gas station 

of an elderly woman who bites the feet of 

swimmers in the lakes. 

I'd spent the day swimming from 

lake to lake, finding secrets and teasing 

myself with scary thoughts like: 

Why not, maybe, and could it be. 

I think I could be. 

The scariest answer is that 

profound yes and I always feel a 

warmth in my belly that 

threatens to sink me. 

it is a dense heat. as if 

I have eaten a white dwarf star 

and I'm pulling the time-space-surface of 

the water down and my decreated

hands and feet and throat 

all orbit my stellar tummy. 

It's what I imagined drowning 

to be like and the memory 

resonates in my belly when I 

remember the still 

surface of the lake. 

Yet the bites have persisted

and now when I swallow

that future that once felt like 

paralysis is now in my belly, 

alive, anchoring me, pulling me 

into this depth by the ankles. 

nibbling.