She told me once that when she was young she would imagine herself with scales that grew beneath the membranes of her skin—a flaking layer of silver-blue between her bones and the surface of her body that would prevent her from becoming waterlogged if she were ever to drown. I used to think of her like this, before we fucked or when she rolled over toward me in the night; about hands pulling her down beneath black water, about scales growing over her eyes. She taught me to swim because I couldn’t, held on to my waist and buoyed me along. If I wanted to teach you the way I was taught, she was
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