Cheyenne

Rachel Jamison Webster

I went down and down. 

 I swam beside the boat, 

 near its sucking wake and tall 

 dangerous sides. I pulled 

 through water hung with mud and slick（光滑的） 

 shale-stumbled banks running up to trees 

 and scattered logs bleached white by the sun. 

 The way I loved seemed to be confounding（混淆，困惑） 

 everyone. I was not alone, 

 I had a friend I did not need language 

 with as we paddled side by side. 

 I was not shopping, scanning 

 the horizon for what would be a better life 

 but beside that ship of people 

 being ferried safe within their deaths. 

 We would all arrive at the same time, 

 but me by my own rhyming muscle. 

 I swam until the water grew warm 

 as a body around my body, until I was 

 in a liquid I had been before, I opened 

 my eyes against the current 

 and the stripping weeds, dragged myself 

 ever deeper into the strands of the past, 

 back to the riversplit where it all began 

 and scrambled out at last onto land 

 tingling with bramble（荆棘，树莓） and branch. 

 And you were there, and we were 

 strong-limbed and browning, and back.