which only our parents knew 
was our last, I swam to the bottom 
of the hot tub, as I had done in every pool 
of my childhood, looking for a secret door
to another world—except this time
my long, unbound hair found 
some kind of drain, some current,
and was pulled into it, pinning me 
to the floor. I had no way to tell my sisters 
I couldn’t lift my head, couldn’t reach 
their legs, mute, invisible under cover 
of a whitewater ceiling of bubbles,
me, champion of breath-holding,
always first to dive in the stream
by our family cabin, snow melt, cold as ice—
I had to rip the hair from my scalp
to get out of that water alive.