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.