Gladiator

With tattoo glistening in a chlorine slick, he breasts
the water stiffly; once an athlete, now calcifying.
Oblivious to the droopy-suited girls hurling their
matchstick bodies off the pool’s edge—dripping
bottoms abloom with flowers, rainbows, birds—he
bludgeons forward grimly. There is a half-eaten taco
on a table. The back of my chair cuts into my backflesh.
I’m too sore to adjust; I let the wound numb.

My daughter’s very first swim lesson was
not here, but I held her slippery body with a pride
that almost made me nauseous in its intensity.
The man is resting now, holding to the side, his
tattoo facing me. The young girls continue to slap
the water with their spindly limbs. He is a gladiator.