they made us

they taught us
how to swim.
bright, squeaky wings
buoying us
until we could push
the wall away.
nothing elegant.
no strokes
that would win us medals
or even save our lives.
but we could cannonball
into the complex pool
and make it
to the other side.

we’d pull each other’s hair
sometimes, then.
shove each other
just to get our own space.
acting our ages.

and them. only
twenty years on us,
acting their ages,
slamming doors
and calling names
we hadn’t learned yet.

//

sometimes they dressed us
in the same dresses,
one red, one blue.
sat us shoulder to shoulder
in the portrait studio,
already facing
divergent directions.

when we moved on
from shoving
to words,
they made us
write nice things about each other.
we’d ask each other
for ideas.
you’re nice, you’re pretty,

what else.
they seemed to do
the opposite
themselves.

//

here we are now.
an archipelago
instead of a tree.
whether it’s swimming distance,
I can’t say.
the gaps shrink and grow
with the tides.

they made us
without knowing
how to make us
know. our knowing
is what we made
ourselves. a system
of signals. a rope bridge
crafted in the dark.
you are the only one
who swims the way I do.

Elizabeth Galoozis’s debut full-length collection, Law of the Letter (2025), won the Hillary Gravendyk Prize from the Inlandia Institute. Her poems appear in Air/Light, RHINO, Sinister Wisdom, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and for Best of the Net. Elizabeth works as a librarian, lives in southern California, and can be found on Instagram and Blue Sky at @thisamericanliz, and at elizabethgaloozis.com.