sonder

azul

there was a girl who liked to sing in the locker room showers:

"sola, sola en el olvido
sola, sola con su espíritu
sola, con su amor el mar
sola, en el muelle de san blás..."

she was called azul. maybe because she was born in a kiddie pool. born in the water and caught in her mother's hands. her eyes looked like acorn tops but anyone could see the blue in them, the glint of the sea. a water baby. then a mermaid. then a swimmer.

azul was in the second lane. i was in the third. but she had a bad habit of sitting on the lane lines so i got a good look at her. sunny. lots to say. good pipes in her throat. she had a front tooth that never came in but it was a good place to stick a straw. that's what she said anyway.

we had swim meets on saturdays and azul's dad always set up a tent over the big tire. we would sit on it and huddle with bunched up towels soaked in chlorine. i secretly liked the smell but some people like marina, whose hair turned green, didn't. azul would sit close and eat a blue fla-vor-ice because those were her favorite even though her mother hated the stain it left. you look like a mood ring, she would say. but her father would tease her and then azul would go up on the diving block and swim, swim, swim for 50 yards. her dad followed her to the other side and he would hit the edge of the pool hard and when azul hit the edge too, he would push on the stopwatch with a grin like a zipper.

i remembered azul's dad because i wished my dad loved me like him. but then he stopped coming. stopped pulling the foldable chair next to the pool to watch her swim butterfly. then azul stopped coming too. no one said anything but it was real quiet in the showers without her maná songs. but even when azul did come back, she was not azul. i mean, she was blue alright but it's like someone knocked the clapper out from her bell. cloudy. nothing to say. almost...gone.

momma and i sat at a stoplight. then she said, azul's dad died. and i remembered the enamored girl who would wait for the sailor to come back from sea. she would wait and wait and wait. but a girl who doesn't need seashells to hear the water...? she'd fall in and be dragged down by the anchor. the same one anchoring her in place before. and azul would look up and see the moon watching. a distorted piece of communion bread. her breath ripped out from deflated balloon lungs. the blue water waving. our faces watching and the moon watching, everything blue and salty. she'd see the sailor's face smiling like a zipper before the heaviness would take her away. and then i could see red phosphenes from rubbing my eyes because i felt heavy too.

i quit swimming the next summer. but azul sang one more time before she quit too.

"ella despidió a su amor
el partió en un barco
en el muelle de san blás
el juró que volvería
y empapada en llanto ella juró que esperaría
miles de lunas pasaron y siempre estaba en el muelle
esperando..."

azul, whose heart is bluer any other swimmer's, has thick waves. she is probably above them now. probably singing somewhere on pier. somewhere remembering her sailor, always cheering on the other side of the pool.

translation :
azul- blue
"alone, alone in oblivion
alone, alone with her spirit
alone, alone with her love, the sea
alone on the wharf of san blas"

...

"she bid her love farewell
he departed in a ship in the wharf of san blas
he swore that he would return,
and, soaked in tears, she swore that she would wait
thousands of moons passed away
and she was always on the dock
waiting."