The Boy at Fyrishov - Steffanie Edwins

At Fyrishov a boy is trying to teach his grandmother to float.  

She must be seventy, maybe older, in a navy swimsuit
and one of those rubber caps with flowers on it.
He is eight at most.  

“No, Mormor, like this.” He puts both arms out
and tips his head back to demonstrate.  
She doesn’t trust him.  

I don’t blame her. He has been underwater  
for most of the afternoon.  
“Again,” he says.  

She lies back this time with his hand under her neck  and for three, maybe four seconds the water takes her.
Her feet come up.  

The boy shouts so loudly everyone looks.  
“Mormor! Du flyter!” 
She stands immediately, laughing, wiping water from her eyes.  

Outside, Uppsala is doing what it does in February.
The bicycles are frozen to things. Someone has left a glove
on the number 2 bus.  

Snow pushed against the curb has gone the colour of coffee.
But inside, the boy keeps asking his grandmother to do it again.
And she does.  

By the fourth time he has taken his hand away  
without telling her. She doesn’t notice.  
Her eyes are closed.  

Her ears are underwater. Whatever he is saying  
to her now, she cannot hear. 

He walks beside her anyway, one hand hovering
under the back of her head, not touching.