Eureka Series: Night Swimming
Mary Lou Buschi
Today's Eureka poem is by Mary Lou Buschi
Night Swimming
She has a thick rope of skin
where the flesh was sewn back together
after a metal fence scored and pulled
her thigh apart. She was 15, running
away from a man with a rifle,
swimming her way home.
She jumped
without knowing how deep or far
the bushes would fall.
The air sucked out through the shell
of her lungs; what was up, what was down.
He held the gun on his hip, “Come out or I’ll shoot.”
All but one flying through manicured shrubs,
one who sat shivering, told to disrobe, told
the police will come, as an orange veil of light
slid slowly up the drive.
It was a gaping hole, big enough for a fist.
In the dark it looked like a purple bruise,
so deep it wasn’t bleeding
until she started to run.
Her father watched the surgeon
examining the sides of the laceration
for a gate of skin to pull and sew shut.
Her thigh tight for years, a yard missing,
a chasm she’d never discuss, while he,
the one who didn’t make it,
turns up the drive, climbs the stairs,
to dive inside the furious oscillation
of her bedroom fan, both of them cut to ribbons.
Copyright © 2025 Mary Lou Buschi All rights reserved
from Paddock
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Beautiful - wrenching. We can feel it.
Damn.