I said, “Tell me the story of when I drowned.”
“Which time?” my mother laughs. The bodies of water. The bodies.
She’s lost track of the names of lakes, rivers. Plains or Coastal land.
I am her doll-child, with waterproof skin. I had a washtub for a pool,
& a flaxen-haired Barbie to submerge, proportionate. I recreated my death over and over.