We Go Nightswimming
by Penny Molesso
When everything around us starts to bud,
it is just warm enough to float between
the cypress knees, our bodies trailing off
beneath the murk. The hair behind your ears
comes untucked, nettles dripping
down your shoulders in the shallows.
If I touch you my hand will go straight through,
submerged in another realm. Your gaze renders
me a silver sparkle. We both say please
without opening our mouths. Somewhere,
empty swimming pools grow fallow,
retching possibilities full of egg sacs, slick
algal blooms and sloughed off snakeskins.
There’s an abandoned pool curled over
on its side. The bottom becomes
a doorway in a tiled tunnel, surrounded
by sickly-sweet seams of light.
On the other side, everything swells endlessly.
Waves wash over us, pulled by the moon
in our bedroom window. On the horizon,
a cave filled with stalactites, soft dripping
stone so smooth I want to put my mouth against it.
The other side is a mirror of this lake,
where we ask each other where it’s okay to be touched
and the answer is everywhere.
it is just warm enough to float between
the cypress knees, our bodies trailing off
beneath the murk. The hair behind your ears
comes untucked, nettles dripping
down your shoulders in the shallows.
If I touch you my hand will go straight through,
submerged in another realm. Your gaze renders
me a silver sparkle. We both say please
without opening our mouths. Somewhere,
empty swimming pools grow fallow,
retching possibilities full of egg sacs, slick
algal blooms and sloughed off snakeskins.
There’s an abandoned pool curled over
on its side. The bottom becomes
a doorway in a tiled tunnel, surrounded
by sickly-sweet seams of light.
On the other side, everything swells endlessly.
Waves wash over us, pulled by the moon
in our bedroom window. On the horizon,
a cave filled with stalactites, soft dripping
stone so smooth I want to put my mouth against it.
The other side is a mirror of this lake,
where we ask each other where it’s okay to be touched
and the answer is everywhere.
Penny Molesso is a transmedia artist and writer from Arkansas. They are currently pursuing an MFA in studio art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They use audio and video installation to celebrate the intersection of queerness and neurodivergence. Their work has been exhibited nationally, and published in WMN Zine, and Fraction Magazine.