The steps. Stone. Wet from the swimmer before me, or from the strait reaching up. The cats are watching. The cats always watch the entry. They do not watch the return.
I put my feet in.
Twelve degrees. The cold enters through the soles and climbs the shins and finds the hip. The left hip. The hip has been arguing with me for two years. The fascia pulls tight — a rope coiled too long, the joint stiff, the cold finding the exact place where sixty-three years have settled into the cartilage. The hip says no. The hip has said no every morning for two years. I enter anyway. The entering is the decision. The decision was made once, thirty years ago. Every morning since is the echo.
Stroke. The arms reach. The water parts. The water closes. The closing is the holding. The holding is physics — the water does not decide to hold me any more than the air decides to hold the bird woman. The medium holds because the body enters. I enter. The water holds.
Breath.
Stroke. The shoulders narrowing — they have narrowed over the years, the muscles pulling inward, the body becoming more efficient and less wide. I was wider at thirty-three. The water knew a different body then. The water does not mention it.
Breath.
The fiftieth metre. The hip agrees to the terms. The arguing stops. The cold is no longer cold — the cold is the water and the water is the swim and the swim is the morning. The body has forgotten it objected. The body has absorbed the decision into the muscles and the muscles do not deliberate.
The turn. The wall. My hand touches the concrete and the body folds and reverses and the reversal is the midpoint — of the swim, of the morning. I have been entering for thirty years. I have been returning for thirty years. The entry is the decision. The return is the habit. Habit is what devotion becomes when it no longer needs to be decided.
Stroke. Return. The shore arriving. The steps. The cats have not moved.
I stand. The water falls off me. Twelve degrees leaves the skin and the air — colder than the water today — takes its place. The towel on the railing. My hands are shaking. They shake every morning. They will shake tomorrow.
The water did not choose to hold me. I did not choose to stop entering.
Tomorrow. Same steps. Same cold.
— The Swimmer
The Bosphorus. The steps. The cats are watching.