💜 Lust World 💜 Water Working Its Way In
It’s the most simple of sensations, but it is an aching one that defies explanation. Summer 2012: Strandbad Weißensee in Berlin. I biked more than an hour’s ride from Neukölln to meet my friend Cat. I was wearing a black bikini and a flower crown strung together with those little white flowers that grow everywhere, alongside dandelions and the puff-make-a-wish ones with the meaty little stalks. I dove in and swam to the lake’s center where a magnificent fountain sprayed, and children and teens congregated, treading water. Lazily breaststroking, face immersed, I was a mermaid. I felt the water work into my scalp like watching a paper towel gradually become wet, water soaking through its grid square by square. I was baptized, sanctified, free, and alive. Echoes of this feeling when getting my hair done at a salon — nearly satisfied but holding back. Nothing has ever compared to that moment in the lake, overcome by a new passport, new language, new life, opened eyes. Flipped on my back, partially submerged so it’s all ambient like a seashell to the dome, I couldn’t get enough. Swimming through clear water — the first dip of the summer — I feel something in my core so happy it’s almost sad. Melancholic sunflower. The water overcomes me. I cannot get enough of it. I will be chasing its message with every swim, unsatisfied. Refreshed but never reaching through, never finding it.
Abby Carney is a writer and journalist in New York City. She is obsessed with iced coffee, Cloudwater, distance running, and CW shows. In 2008, she won the April Apple Essay Contest for her essay about Dr. Bragg’s AP Literature class, placed 8th in the state at the 1998 Georgia Spelling Bee, and has won numerous awards for her pumpkin pie. You can find her on Twitter.Â
June 13, 2019
In "Features"
