I Watch People Die

Her face is lovely. Freckles and eyes. That smile, warm like the tiles on the side of a pool in the summertime. I dangle my feet over the edge and watch her slip under the water. Her skin, so white it's green, soft and her hair is a jellyfish; the tentacles dancing in their pyjamas, laughing and jumping on the bed with no grown ups and the boys are downstairs watching TV. She crouches down on the bottom of the pool and I want her to stay there because she's happy and I want her to live forever, ever down there where everything is in slow motion, a dream. But now she's launching herself up through the water and her head is born again into the daylight and she's splashing me. Laughing but she's dying. I can hear it in her voice and see it in the goosebumps on her forearms. She's cold. The other girls in the pool, too. The boys. They're changing, the water now draining from their faces like blood. I won't tell her, though, what she doesn't want to know. I'll say something funny and pretend to fall into the pool. I'll cradle her like a bride over the threshold and we'll spin around and kiss. We'll share a lemonade and lay out in the sun with the radio on and we'll talk about a book that she read and when she sleeps I'll sneak away. I'll go and watch some other people die.