Learning to Drown

Learning to Drown


Hydrodcephalus: an abnormal increase in the amount of
cerebrospinal fluid within the cranial cavity that is
accompanied by expansion of the cerebral ventricles,
enlargement of the skull and especially, the forehead,
and atrophy of the brain.
------Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary


1.
Driving all night, I hear a story
on the radio about prisoners
of war in some foreign country.

Their captors had no room left
to house them, nearly 600 men,
so they marched them down

to a nearby river
and drowned all of them,
one by one, while the other

prisoners watched
from the river bank, silent,
bowed into themselves.

2.
"Water on the brain"
makes the definition easier
to understand, anticipates

the questions always asked;
"What kind of dreams did you have?"
"Was it like drowning?"

I can still see my reflection
in water, my face
flooding the banks, a body

of water erasing boundaries,
changing the distance
between past and present.

3.
I remember the reservation girl
with Down's Syndrome,
weighing over 300 pounds,

wading in Benjamin Lake,
feet tangled in weeds,
falling facedown

into six inches of water.
My cousin, ten years old
trying to lift her,

trying to turn her over,
trying anything
to make her breathe.

4.
My mother tells me
to doctors would not believe
my skull was growing,

swelling, until my cousin
dropped me from a swing.
My mother tells me

I measured
the size of your head every day,
it grew an inch in one week,

but the doctors said no,
it was my mother's imagination
growing. I had nightmares

you were pressed against walls
of our house, breaking through,
that it would never stop.

5.
I used to go with my big brother
to a place on the Spokane River
where he and his friends

dared each other to swim
all the way across the water
to the opposite shore.

I would watch them,
some too scared to swim
past the shallow

water, most making it halfway
and coming back, coughing
water, a few struggling

in the middle
of the river, treading
water, my brother

swimming beyond sight.
I remember watching
water. I remember

waiting for my brother,
wanting to follow him
and recover myself again.


Sherman Alexie.............from Old Shirts & New Skins