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We dove in, not off the floating bridge, but one of the unfinished roads to nowhere, the place in the Arboretum where the creek met Lake Washington where canoes paddled through. Too young to know better, to understand how diving could result in dying, that water could be anything more than the gentle hands of a wet god catching us as we fell. As girls we climbed the cement structure, then one at a time, body after young body, we jumped, as if there wasn’t a freeway to the south of us, as if there wasn’t a better place we should be, as our parents worried as parents do today, that their teenagers, all hands and skin, bikini and unsunblocked, were fine and safe and doing well as we laughed and toppled under Seattle sky into the lake, into the lilypad covered joy because there was never anything to do except find something slightly dangerous, be a little reckless in the summer heat, maybe praying, maybe knowing we all would live.
- Kelli Russell Agodon
- Kelli Russell Agodon