night sky, water on the mind

Tiny pin-point of light, something so minute I shouldn't even be able to catch it with my eye, but it's there, distant and tiny and twinkling so slightly I pay attention to it.

Around me, the typical chaos of any park nowadays. Mostly naked women, men without shirts; all sorts of interesting body shapes, things you couldn't imagine until you see them swimming on the winding, pushing river around the water park. All sorts of bikini bottoms - with little bowties on the hips - pink, yellow, blue, mixed colors, striped, dark muted colors you can't identify in this lighting. Each top seems tied differently, and I wonder hard if and when they come untied. Mine certainly did, on one ride, and, while I caught it quite fine, it does make you consider how many lifeguards here have been flashed a wondrous, wondrous amount of times.

A man with a thick cross scar over his left breast makes me curious to what surgery happened, but he seems happy and for a second I think he notices I'm looking but doesn't react at all to the vague stare I'm giving him.

There are younger men, with six packs and with bulging tummies and with hair trailing down happily and with no hair at all obviously shaving for whatever reason. Attractive in the face, unattractive in body, vis versa, over and over, switching for each man, each boy. Swimming trunks that don't fit, that fortunately do fit, that should have never been bought, that should have been bought much sooner than they were.

The visitors to the water park, I realize, shivering, alone, on the bank of the river, looking for my friends, are just like all the water tubes here. God only can imagine what has happened to these inner tubes - who has grabbed onto them, who has cried on them, who has screamed into the rubber, who has pushed them against friends and strangers and cement walls, who pats them once after the park is closed like a good house-pet having done the day's work. Only the little life-rafts themselves can identify when they came into existence, and they have yet to discover their own demise, still floating and saving lives and having humans cling to them in fear and thrill and joyful agony.

People are just like that. Just by looking at them, you can't tell what happened to them - who has grabbed them, cried for them (or on them), who has screamed at them, who has pushed them away and against walls, who pats them at night before they go to bed. Just because they can tell when they were born, that does not mean they know when they are going to die. They just keep on floating and saving lives and having other humans cling to them in all sorts of emotions barely understood.

By the time my friend comes back to me, my teeth are chattering, and I'm shaking from my feet up to my ears, and I grab onto him, trying not to compare him or me to a rubber inner tube drifting down a river in a water park, though it is undoubtedly inevitable for me to do so.