Buoyancy

The woman ahead of me in line has a layer of fat sticking out of her belly. I wonder if she is uncomfortable in her skin like I am uncomfortable in mine sometimes. The girl behind the counter is skinny, but her jaw is fat, ape-like. I sit and listen even though I'm not really. I say yeah, and uh huh but I am thinking about the girl who stood next to me in line instead of getting behind me. I got coffee but it is hot out kind of, but I have been listening for so long that the sun is setting and it is actually getting cold. My hands tingle because my circulation is bad because I smoke. I think about misunderstandings and friends that i used to call my friends but probably never were my friends. I remember when you gave me that poem about the steps and for Christmas you gave me two hands praying, carved out of wood. I gave you the Te-Tao Ching because we were taking a class on eastern religion. It was hard back. If a tree is rigid, it will come to its end. I remember one time you came over really late and we talked for a long time. And then you left. I was worried about you and I went to your house because you didn't go to work and your mother cried and asked what was wrong with you. I think you know now. You said I look colorful and I usually look dark. People tell me I am very unenthusiatic and I guess I am. But those people are never around when I want to play freeze tag in the street by my house, or when I demand we go to the playground and swing, or when I do cartwheels into the pool. I know I am more afraid than I used to be though. I stand on the diving board and hold my arms over my and bend over and stare straight down into the water. At first the bottom looks close but then it is far away, fathoms away and the water looks huge and vast. So much bigger than me that I can't dive in. So I just jump, feet first, plugging my nose. And as my head pops out of the water I wonder when I started loving land so much. When I stopped wanting to fly and stopped wanting to fall. I think it happens when you lose control. When the wave knocks you over and when you get water up your nose or when you start spinning and almost hit a tree. When you can't regulate your buoyancy and you fall very slow and the ocean is like space, except blue. And the rhythm of your breathing is supposed to relax you but instead it makes you anxious. So instead of the deep breaths you are supposed to be taking, they are short and shallow and you know you are using your air too fast. You want to float to the top, but you can't, and you can't sink to the bottom, and the ocean looks even bigger once you are in it, hovering, using up all your breath.