Ivana Franke
by Ann Lewinson

In the water there is clear in the water there is cool in the water there are ripples sticky ripples still ripples stuck together sticky ripples in the water there is I in the water there is you in the water in the lost in the water in the calm in the you in the us in the water.

"Why are you whispering?" you ask.

"The stillness. A gasp will ripple through us like a faultline. Be still."

I open my mouth and breathe deep the water, into my lungs, into my heart, until I balloon like a pufferfish until my distended skin dissolves until I disperse into nothing.

The next day, you go fishing. Your boat sits in the middle of the lake, resting flat on the still water, unyielding like a floor. The sun beats red lines into your forehead as you count fishing songs in your head. Each one you can recall begins, "I'm gonna go fishin'..."

The lake has other ideas. "Wade in the water," it whistles.

You are roused from your count by a tug on the line, a sudden yank that jerks you upright from your boat on your floor of lake, which suddenly gives way with the weight of the tug and tremors open with a crack and you plunge down, down into the water, your head torpedoing down, trailing tiny bubbles from your nose. You sink past schools of fish, flapping their iridescent scales, undisturbed. Your presence is less than a stone cast by the whim of a child who has discovered its powers of dispersal. You displace nothing, not even the water which reels you in deeper into the darkness into the silence into the depths of the water. The water sticks like flypaper, like flies under your skin. You are falling like rain, falling like manna, falling like stone.

Can you feel me? I am embracing you like a fishing net, enveloping you, capturing you, rescuing you.

Listen. There is nothing to hear.

Ann Lewinson  is a free-lance writer for Stagebill and Citysearch.com.  She has earned degrees from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, the University of Chicago and a certificate in filmmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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