You draw up the thin floral blind to let the early light in. Wipe the steam from the bathroom mirror to see your own stern face staring back at you. That morning, you are wrought, thunderous, your body still pumping from the heat of the dawn swim, your muscles coiled and waiting. And a new frustration gathering over it all. It sets you alight, so that you thirst for something, anything to move you. Sometimes the urgency is so strong you think you could scream. But you don’t. You’re safe, silent, and all the worse for it.

Slowly, cautiously, you turn in the burnished light. In the mirror, your body is new and tense. Swimmer’s shoulders, sun-browned and sand-scrubbed. The pale lines of your razor-backed bathers are broken over your skin like skeletal wings. Next to the sink, your arms are long and freckled. The muscles in your thighs are packed tight as cartilage.