Water Sports — The Festival Review

Princeton, 1993

Coming off a heavy binge of Danielle Steel and graphic novels, she rolls me in the eating club’s carpet. Her first murder: my feet stick out. She’ll tell them — friends, police, therapist — that I deserved it. That I was asking for it: “He was the only one in our year that was up for water sports.” Why it mattered, I'll never know. I only said that because I wanted you to like me. You looked at me in the showers as I pissed on my own feet: “For the athlete’s foot.” You smiled and my stomach lit up. Walking home at night after gym class, I stopped in the woods behind the school to touch myself, unable to wait till I got back to my bunk. In the carpet, I remember: I let her borrow a cardigan, and she found the picture of you in that jean jacket, your hair a mess, the edges thumb-worn and soft. She shoves my body down the staircase. My feet slap the wall. Her fists cut a barb, a question mark, about two men and how could they possibly love each other. She drags the carpet outside, heaving the weight of me into the trunk of her ’92 Geo Prizm, and slams the trunk closed: “There’s plenty of water sports where you’re going.”

Antonio Addessi is pursuing his MFA in Poetry at Columbia University (Oct '20). When he's not writing, he likes long subway rides to the beach, fried chicken, and fire-escape gardening.