Just Ahead

Everything was unwieldy when I was fifteen. That summer I squeezed into a size 14 swimsuit, amazed that all this was me. My suit was yellow. I spent all day in it, canoeing badly across lakes in Canada. The boy I loved paddled always just ahead. At night I snuck with him between bushes, smoking stale cigarettes, never touching. Was it my new size? The color of my suit? Was it the way I whined during portages? We watched a moose in the water once, our breath held in simultaneous wonder, and it was the closest I came to confession.

Photo credit: Kate Farnady