At first, the boat seemed close enough, effortlessly close, so that I did not even try to grasp my paddle as it drifted away on my own splash. I laughed. That was when the taste of water and all the tang of old boreal shoreline surprised me. And stopped me. My front crawl changed to standing. I heard you on our raft, laughing along. I laughed but no sound came out. That was when I dropped my shoes. You did not see them go, and it made no difference to my laugh, but I dropped my shoes where I stood suspended and thought about how far they fell and how little they mattered after all. You sat at the side of the raft and kicked. If you laughed I did not hear you but my ears were full of cold and a wet that felt like driving downhill on a steep slope and pressure on the drum. And I dropped my knapsack; and that you saw. You slowly slipped into the stream and swam to me. You thought I was effortlessly close, close enough, and that was when I undid my belt, and the water covered my eyes, but with clicking my jeans fell away but it was my arms that hurt in a twisted way, and twinging and needling they would not raise my nose above the line. I smelled the frog and fish. I tasted the bog. I unhooked my watch, I don’t know why. You reached out to me an army of arm’s lengths with only two hands, and I thought about how I loved you so much and I wondered if you, who never held on to me, would ever be able to let the moment go.