Pool water, scraps of creative nonfiction Options

[thanhmai]

I sat in the pool under the sunshine that flooded in through the big glass windows. The light hitting the pool made everything hazy and bright, and the reflection in the water spun from the constant movement of little children splashing. I found myself drifting so easily into thought looking at this blinding water. Maybe it was the blue and white blur that unconsciously lulled me from the shrieks of the overly excited children and churning water, but I was gone - it was all a fuzzy background like the static of a tape recorder playing an empty cassette tape, and I didn't see anything but images moving like pictures in a film. It is frequent, how my thoughts are always in the past, pulling tiny memories like jars off a dusty shelf in the corners of my mind. I saw your smile, quivering in the reflection of the water, and then remembered how you rarely smiled to anyone else, but when I made you laugh, you lit up so beautifully. Yes, you were beautiful to me. Then a shadow jolted me from the distant cloud I was floating in as a child stood at the edge of the pool, enveloping the haze of white light and my thoughts away into nothing more than a stench of chlorine.