A Brief Manual for Swimmers  // Reginald Shepherd
History has written its ritual runes and we have scrawled some moments of conversation into damp sand. The reservoir holds its toxins in trust for us, and the sky is russet and cobalt with carbon monoxide and other emissions. We choose our tints from colors offered us, and could I choose another pigment I would drown in it, diving beneath your skin to find devoted days and the coral beds buried under these plains. Some have been erased and some have been burned, the pages of sundry extinctions. Perhaps I can recast these hours in fresher hues, fill in the outline of a hand perspiring in yours all afternoon. Now we are brave in failing light, our dripping lives in someone else’s wasted hands, west of our best intention.                              I cupped illegible salt water between two palms: the artificial waves demand a sacrifice. When I touch your back after you’ve come from the sea, it leaves a mark till midnight, like a fossil. They call it epidermography, a sensitive skin. Reckless, come soon, or not at all.
