Winter Swimming by Laura Blomvall

Winter Swimming by Laura Blomvall.

One.

I don't descend all the way the first time, only the second.

A fractal fugue gluing cruise ships to South Harbour, thin ice wraps across the bay, adhering dreams of reaching Tallinn, Stockholm or Mariehamn.

I listen to the colds, ghostly half-breaths, dry flakes hurling in eastern winds like God's hair, the origin of Finnish song flurrying from psaltery's dust of pike's jawbone.

It's minus eight degrees November.

Euras, or hearsay, ösliga vindar, idä tuulet, vostocnija vetri.

Two.

First time I follow my body's loudness.

Through her skin it is much safer in.

Instincts tell me to keep breathing in, out, in, out.

Second, I listen to the stillness beneath.

Stripped to my bikini, I step in water, melt in the grey paints of the glacial sea.

The worst part is when the waves reach my hardened nipples, touch the sharper quavers of my collarbones.

I try not to gasp.

I've gone down too slow, my legs have gone numb.

I push myself in the sea's fin of ill ebb, take four, five strokes from the iced steel ladder.

Three.

This morning, Yanni warned me, handing over porridge.

Beginners shouldn't stay in longer than two minutes and bring a warmer hat.

She lives in Helsinki with James, her boyfriend from Hampshire.

We met in London.

She wrote on Virginia Woolf, mermaids, sisters, birds.

They left after Brexit, wild swam each morning during the pandemic.

I moved to Bristol, sounding foreign in my own mother tongue.

Winter Swimming by Laura Blomvall.

One.

I don't descend all the way the first time, only the second.

A fractal fugue gluing cruise ships to South Harbour, thin ice wraps across the bay, adhering dreams of reaching Tallinn, Stockholm or Mariehamn.

I listen to the colds, ghostly half-breaths, dry flakes hurling in eastern winds like God's hair, the origin of Finnish song flurrying from psaltery's dust of pike's jawbone.

It's minus eight degrees November.

Euras, or hearsay, ösliga vindar, idä tuulet, vostocnija vetri.

Two.

First time I follow my body's loudness.

Through her skin it is much safer in.

Instincts tell me to keep breathing in, out, in, out.

Second, I listen to the stillness beneath.

Stripped to my bikini, I step in water, melt in the grey paints of the glacial sea.

The worst part is when the waves reach my hardened nipples, touch the sharper quavers of my collarbones.

I try not to gasp.

I've gone down too slow, my legs have gone numb.

I push myself in the sea's fin of ill ebb, take four, five strokes from the iced steel ladder.

Three.

This morning, Yanni warned me, handing over porridge.

Beginners shouldn't stay in longer than two minutes and bring a warmer hat.

She lives in Helsinki with James, her boyfriend from Hampshire.

We met in London.

She wrote on Virginia Woolf, mermaids, sisters, birds.

They left after Brexit, wild swam each morning during the pandemic.

I moved to Bristol, sounding foreign in my own mother tongue.