Are you walking around the perimeter of this pool, staring at the square tiles with measurements of depth, which in this foreign language is labeled with something that looks like profundity, and so you laugh at the double meaning, still anxious about how cold it will be, because you haven’t jumped in this pool, temperature unknown or where the shallow end or the deep end meet, plotting how you could get in and out as quickly as possible, and then begin to doubt why you even want to swim in the first place with toes gripping at the concrete lip. You can examine that depth infinitely, charting every possible course of action, freezing cold on the bare tile, uncomfortable and transfixed and stubbornly avoiding the dive and movement, shivering, more miserable with every passing second.
Or did you just jump in, all pressure and noise released?
