Spring 2023 Contest — 1st Place
Miscalculating The Gravity Of My Situation
The smell of chlorine overpowers everything. Mildewed towels can’t compete, regardless of how long they’ve been balled up in gym bags. Even the pheromones wafting from the sweat glands of my fellow students are impotent in comparison.
Did you know that it’s not plain chlorine we smell in a swimming pool? That unmistakable, unforgettable odor comes from trichloramine, a chemical substance produced when chlorine mixes with urea. And we all know where urea comes from. I read that the mixture is volatile and toxic. It would probably kill me if I inhaled a concentrated dose.
The chlorine-plus-pee fumes enter my body with each slow breath I take. They disinfect my respiratory system and then return to the fetid pool air with my exhale. I am suspended in time, motionless in the water, flotsam going nowhere.
When I was a kid, we stayed for several weeks every summer at my grandparents’ house in their retirement village in Arkansas. I was a strong swimmer and spent most of my waking hours in the lake. If I expelled all the air from my lungs, I could sink to the sandy bottom and grab hold of a rock or firmly rooted reed to keep myself anchored. There in the clear water I would lie, watching horseflies circle just above the surface, until the need to…
