Étude, winter

by Bex Pachl

If the campus of Wellesley was a body— to commune with, on which young girls sacrificed themselves on an altar to appease its errant desires– then the lake was its face. I know exactly which edge created the mouth, that unnatural, curved smile. Dogs occasionally drowned in the lake’s depths; kayaks skirted from cheekbone to cheekbone. There were traditions and magical myths surrounding the lake: people tossed like coins when they won a particular race, first years sneaking out their first weekend to jump in, their bare breasts swinging like pendulums on the dive. We gave the lake our attention, our devotion, ritualistic laps around and around, even in the winter. And, even though the lake, the face, couldn’t possibly be undertaken and surveyed in one glance, we loved the bits of it we could, and we loved it, felt protective of it, like one might feel of a lover’s face or that of their child, turned perpetually in half-shadow.

I became a young adult at Wellesley. I look back on the body of Wellesley wistfully, wondering about the lies I believed about myself and that place, and how breaking free of them both has come with its own sadness, its own grief too. And, in thinking of the grief, I am led back to the lake, again, thinking of its eyes now clasped shut for winter. Like the lake, my grief waits patiently, expectantly, for the weather to change, to melt into itself once more.

Bex Pachl is a MFA candidate in Creative Nonfiction at George Mason University and the Nonfiction Editor at So to Speak. They received their BA in Sociology from Wellesley College. You can find them at @books4bex on Instagram.