From LYNLEE FLOATS
By J. Scott Smith
In the July 2009 Pocket Review:
“Lynlee floats on her back in the club pool, the turquoise water set like a jewel in the dun-colored earth beyond the pool’s concrete perimeter. Her sun-streaked hair ripples like something alive as she takes a backward stroke. Only in the water have her gangly limbs not lost their grace.
The pool is quiet. Lynlee, Mama, a couple of young mothers with infants splashing in the shallow end. The July heat keeps everyone indoors and the lukewarm water is small attraction. But it’s a dry heat, Daddy says. Not like, say, Galveston. Lynlee closes her eyes, sinks. Underwater, she looks up at the white disc of sun, the sky like a crackled china bowl. She sees her mother’s wavy form, a book open on her knees. Lynlee swims to the pool’s edge, blinks water from her eyes."
