Firsts
More and more, there are firsts. The first time she puts her head underwater, the first time she swims a length of the pool without stopping. The first hundred yards, the first mile, just when she thought she was done with all that. The days and days of gray after her kid died, how she drove his clothes and the clock radio from the hospital to the Goodwill bin in the Tops parking lot, tossed everything in. The clothes fluttering and sinking, the clock radio shattering, a cheap thing, picked up at a Kmart on sale. No one wanted them anymore, the salesman said. They want digital and WiFi and big sound. But Petey liked to sit and watch the swoop of the red second-hand, swore that it stopped right before it hit twelve and then jumped three seconds to catch up to itself. Goodbye, radio, goodbye, Petey. She wonders what he’d say if he could see her soft old self packed into spandex, capped and goggled in the swimming pool at the Y. In the water, they’re all weightless. It’s a good place to cry, too, just dip your face in and have at it, though lately she hasn’t had to. Yesterday she heard someone whistling in the shower and it turned out to be her. Another first, imagine that.
Author: Sarah Freligh is the author of Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize, and A Brief Natural History of Women. She is the recipient of an NEA poetry fellowship in 2009.
If you have enjoyed this story, please consider making a donation to our free-to-read literary journal.