The blue pool of water

For Jenny's entire life, from the time she was a small child, she loved to dive deep deep deep into blue pools of water, where life was muffled, where sound lost all context, where she was free to be entirely herself. She loved the silence, the escape, the complete calm that came over her as her hair floated around her, as her legs lifted of their own accord, as she let tiny bubbles escape her lips like a ticking clock, keeping time until she had to go back to the world. As Jenny got older, she learned how to stay down longer and longer—first lessons, then dive team, then swim training, and finally extreme endurance competitions—and she felt as if the water were her second, and better home. This is where she could think thoughts that were only hers, where voices, so loud and offensive, went away. Above ground she felt  heavy and burdensome but in the water her body was bouyant and small, it slipped through waves like liquid through a sieve. The pool was where her secrets were kept, even those too ugly to think; in the pool they were safe to pull out and turn over, pound with repetition, wear down with pulling and breathing that always got Jenny places other than here. For her whole life there was nothing else in that water but her, and she occupied it like air clings to a tree.