Dion O’Reilly

Lightfoot

Years ago, almost a woman, swimming in the San Lorenzo with my boyfriend, I stripped out of my one-piece, released it downstream.

My love lay on a boulder that loomed—like a giant—over a swimming hole, where I dove, stirred up silt, came up like a selkie, floated to shallows, lay face up in the sun.

At that age, in those times, we believed our freedom would last forever—long after our puppy-love turned vicious from Jack Daniels and meth tabs, after our friends tired of our sloppiness, and we were arrested in a stolen car,

after he went to rehab, and I, with my mother’s money, was shipped off to Argentina, where women kissed my cheek and tall, Italian men shook my hand;

and yet, in the jewelled way of memory—until I die or lose my mind—I’ll see it: Lightfoot’s cloud-spun hair and Indian skin, splayed across a rock like a god.

sun-lit moment—
a fish flickers
into another world

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About the Author

Dion O’Reilly has authored three poetry collections: Limerence, a finalist for the John Pierce Chapbook Competition; Sadness of the Apex Predator; and Ghost Dogs, winner of the The Independent Press Award for Poetry and honorable mention for the Eric Hoffer Poetry Award. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, The Slowdown, and Alaska Quarterly. See more at dionoreilly.com.

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