from Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton

Water

Water is elemental, it's what we're made of, what we can't live within or without. Trying to define what swimming means to me is like looking at a shell sitting in a few feet of clear, still water. There it is, in sharp focus, but once I reach for it, breaking the surface, the ripples refract the shell. It becomes five shells, twenty- five shells, some smaller, some larger, and I blindly feel for what I saw perfectly before trying to grasp it.