The lake was bigger than its biography:
sink or swim, the end was always a mirage.
 
Nowadays the message in a bottle
is the emptiness. No one is lost at sea.
 
Everyone is happy. I wondered if it could
ever come to this: loving the endlessness of water,
 
still calling it a lake. When I first learned
to dive for the open, I became disoriented—
 
how much freedom can one take? Or be given?
Some animals give birth in water. There is the joke
 
that a human can spend their entire life underwater
if they were born there. Indeed, our hometowns say stuff
 
about us: you are meant to live, you are meant to live
on as a cautionary tale. Los Angeles. The angels
 
of which valley god? Or all the saints in California
wondering who left them to the desert. It’s not like
 
they had a choice of residence. Some places are simply
not worth the money. Some bodies, too. They last
 
for a few years and leave no legacy.
Don’t be so sure that it’s a bad thing. Take note:
 
celebrities give out their signatures as if to say
I was here. I was here. Like graffiti
 
on ruins, a message to the future. You were there.
You were there with me. In the lake, in the cold water
 
with our eyes open. What a sight we were.