This is where we did our exercises
before we died anyway.
To live better, we did them daily,
some of us in gray sweatsuits,
some of us in middy blouses
if it was long enough ago
and we were female
(as some of us were).
We played tennis or we rowed
in covered gymnasiums,
or we swam in natatoriums
where the water is now
gone, even the place for it
bricked over, filled in.
We can’t imagine it, our water
gone. But we know this is so,
as well as the things we lifted,
the steps we ran, our efforts,
our breaths, numbered after all.

Prompt: Poetic Asides (exercise).