The pool isn’t empty
there just isn’t any water in it.
There are pine needles and leaves
in the deep end.
Someone has thrown the starting blocks in
and the picnic tables
but strangely the diving board still stands.
The black lines my children followed at swim meets
and the black crosses on the walls at the ends
are flaking but there.
It’s the first place my children walked to by themselves.
They drained it one September
after a trustee spent the money for a new filtration system
on a family vacation to Myrtle Beach.
I used to stand where that Pepsi can is and
throw my children as far as I could.
Throw my children as far as I could.
You can do that in a pool.
And other children who didn’t have dads
would swim over and I would throw them too
and no one seemed to notice that I couldn’t throw some of them as
far.
They were just happy to be thrown.
Slick with sunscreen, smelling of cocoa butter and coconuts.
Smells mixed with chlorine, tanning oil,
and the oil they fried the mozzarella sticks and nuggets in.
The lights are like busted portholes,
like they broke and the water ran out
and the nothing flowed in.
No, it’s not nothing.
The pool isn’t empty.
There just isn’t any water in it.
