I ripped my leg hurtling a chain-link fence. 

Blood, red as the center of a Japanese flag,

rolled to my ankle. I ignored the tear, happy 

to be on the other side of the closed sign 

fastened to the gate of Millbrook Apartments’ 

private swimming pool. 

Humidity, like a wool blanket, smothered

July night  My cousin, Butch, and 

our friend, Jim, followed me over the fence. 

Chlorine had never been so inviting. 

We were drunk on determination 

to cool our bodies.  Moonlight spread

sparkles over water as we slipped beneath it,

the only sound as we rose to the surface, water 

breaking from our bodies like liquid glass. 

I was also drunk on my nearness to Jim, 

a handsome High School junior who would 

join paratroopers after graduation and die 

that year when his practice plane malfunctioned 

during maneuvers over Wellington, Ohio. 

We had sliced our wrists the summer before,

became blood brothers.  This night, however, 

was about risk and carefree frolic before 

servicemen would place a flag over Jim’s coffin 

in less than two years.  Every girl wanted him,

but he confessed one night to wanting me.

I ignored him, changed the topic, and we never spoke 

of it again.  A few months passed, and 

he became engaged to Susan Moore. 

Fifty years later,  I still wonder if I had given in, 

would that have prevented him from proving 

himself more of a man by falling from the sky.