Falling Out

You see when I jumped in I never planned on being lifted in reverse, slow-motion from the pool, ripples racing inwards and reforming beads of water, flying up in perfect arcs and back to where my falling body had disturbed them from the surface, my body flying up back towards the diving board from where I came, hoisted as if by pulleys in a cheap theater production, the insides of my thighs shaking with nerves that said this wasn’t in the script, the faces at the pool all turned towards me like tiny satellites, honed in on  my body as it turned and walked with my command off the diving board, taking painstaking steps down the ladder one rung at a time, arriving at the concrete shaking, shrugging with apology to the line for what happened, dripping, head hung, flushed.