Swimsuit

I asked my mom to buy a blue suit
so I could match the ocean’s own blue

on good days. She took me to the beach once
and bad-mouthed how bright and sandy it was,

both bad for the skin. How bad to be dark.
She said she’d never take me to the beach

again so I took my blue suit to Mai’s,
who only lived two liquor stores away.

We floated in the pool, not talking or laughing,
but holding onto foam and trying not to move.

I could live like this, I thought, lie here
and have my own kind of drifting blue.

I could have a small ocean without sand,
a chlorine-clean white ladder to guide me

into the deep end, and the same ladder
to help me out. I could lay by the pool

beneath the motel sign outside Mai’s home
and turn back my tan to oyster-white.