Swimming

As a girl in the desert, I never learned to swim
because my mother, stern and hopeful as a rope,
forbade this pleasure, saying boys’ bodies
in the same pool could get
a girl pregnant
could send their iridescent jellyfish
— heaven and treacherous —
to kiss me
and I would sink in, electric,
unknowable to her:
from under water, my eyes
would send up a new rippled light —
anemones would rip
apart my chest —

now I lie in the desert and know
its husky whisper, the sea
of crickets crooning, the earthliquid
star sliding in the dry riverbed —
Mother, you must know: in the desert
the sand scratches, rolls
and sighs between your fingers,
over your throat,

up your thighs.