‘Til human voices wake us, and we drown

From Que Sera Sera:

It’s early July, I’m twenty-five, and he and I are skinny-dipping late at night at someone else’s house. The surface of the water is violet, the ripples black, no moon. The day was so warm that the water feels like a bath, but there’s a breeze and honeysuckle overhead. We are up against the stone wall in the corner, and the broken tiles scrape my skin. Afterwards, I float in the middle of the deep end on my back, arms outstretched, eyes to the sky, until I nearly fall asleep. Years later, late at night on the phone, he asks me if I remember this night, and says, “You were like steam on the water… I kept trying to breathe you in.” I blink in the darkness of my bedroom, surprised to realize that he was there.

I think if a boyfriend of mine was that sexy and poetic, either we would fight about whether or not T.S. Eliot is the greatest poet ever to live (which he is) and end up breaking up over it, or my boyfriend would turn out to be gay. Or a priest. Or possibly both.