POOL
At the red light on University Drive, I sat in my car in the rain as two sedans spun in slow motion before me, toys pushed too hard, sliding into sloppy slippery traffic.
For hours in a small windowless freezing room, I spliced digital video and created fine fades—just so. I did not save my projects in the media bin. I did not name or save a thing.
My friend with the salt-water swimming pool invited me. After work, I drove downtown to her house in the rain, working around flooded streets. She left her front door open; gold light poured as a pathway from her home into the warm evening.
I entered the foyer, noticed her husband standing on the stairs. I bowed into his glowering.
She and I swam sidestroke in the rain, facing each other, talking. I was looking for lightning when she said, He is not dreadful. I thought I saw some. But the sky was grey and low, thick on us and I did not know for certain.
But we found baby snapping turtles caught in the filter basket. She pulled them out one by one and I set them by the holding pond in the marshy grasses. Tilted there, all black-shelled, stilled awful little fists.
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HEATHER SELLERS is the author of four chapbooks and two full-length volumes of poetry, Drinking Girls and Their Dresses (Ahsahta Press, 2002) and The Boys I Borrow (New Issues Press, 2007), a finalist for the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets.
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