When will my reflection show who I am inside?

Hey, Rosalie? Do you know how to drown a blonde? Stick a mirror to the bottom of a pool.

"slowly she spread her arms and stood there swan-like, radiating a pride in her young perfection that lit a warm glow in Carlyle's heart. "We're going through the black air with our arms wide," she called, "and our feet straight out behind like a dolphin's tail, and we're going to think we'll never hit the silver down there till suddenly it'll be all warm round us and full of little kissing, caressing waves." Then she was in the air, and Carlyle involuntarily held his breath. He had not realized that the dive was nearly forty feet. It seemed an eternity before he heard the swift compact sound as she reached the sea. And it was with his glad sigh of relief when her light watery laughter curled up the side of the cliff and into his anxious ears that he knew he loved her."

Your scare me rather. My reflection in the glass never did that; of course, I knew it so well. Like something I had tamed...I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.

The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.

Scientists call it the mammalian dive reflex or...the Master Switch of Life, and they've been researching it for... fifty years. ...[C]oined by Per Scholander ...it refers to variety of physiological reflexes in the brain, lungs, heart [etc.] that are triggered the second we put our face in the water. The deeper... the more pronounced... Ancient cultures... employed it... to harvest sponges, pearls, coral and food hudreds of feet below the surface of the ocean...

Women, like mirrors, may reflect, </br> Perchance your very face; </br> If you the compliment neglect, </br> Another takes your place.

I'll be your mirror Reflect what you are In case you don't know

"Tereza tried to see herself through her body. That is why, from girlhood on, she would stand before the mirror so often. And because she was afraid her mother would catch her at it, every peek into the mirror had a tinge of secret vice.
It was not vanity that drew her to the mirror; it was amaze­ment at seeing her own "I." She forgot she was looking at the instrument panel of her body mechanisms; she thought she saw her soul shining through the features of her face. She forgot that the nose was merely the nozzle of a hose that took oxygen to the lungs; she saw it as the true expression of her nature.
Staring at herself for long stretches of time, she was occa­sionally upset at the sight of her mother's features in her face. She would stare all the more doggedly at her image in an attempt to wish them away and keep only what was hers alone. Each time she succeeded was a time of intoxication: her soul would rise to the surface of her body like a crew charging up from the bowels of a ship, spreading out over the deck, waving at the sky and singing in jubilation."

"How do I look to him?" she asked herself. She got up and brought a long mirror towards the window. She stood it on the floor against a chair. Then she sat down in front of it on the rug and, facing it, slowly opened her legs. The sight was enchanting. The skin was flawless, the vulva, roseate and full. She thought it was like the gum plant leaf with its secret milk that the pressure of the finger could bring out, the odorous moisture that came like the moisture of the sea shells. So was Venus born of the sea with this little kernel of salty honey in her, which only caresses could bring out of the hidden recesses of her body.

In the pool I lose myself. My thoughts merge and flow. Everything — my body, my heart, the universe — seems tolerable when I’m protected by water and nothing touches me. All I think about is the effort. Below my body there’s a restless play of dark and light projected onto the bottom of the pool, that drifts away like smoke.

The water in which the mystic swims is the same water a madman drowns in.

The perception is that new equipment can make a diver relatively safe. I know people with the fanciest equipment including their “wrist watch”, but they are not necessarily good divers. There is a great gap between diver ability and equipment.

PRETENDING TO DROWN

The only regret is that I waited
longer than a breath
to scatter the sun's reflection
with my body.

New stars burst upon the water
when you pulled me in.

On the shore, our clothes
begged us to be good boys again.

Every stick our feet touched
a snapping turtle, every shadow
a water moccasin.

Excuses to swim closer to one another.

I sank into the depths to see you
as the lake saw you: cut in half
by the surface, taut legs kicking,
the rest of you sky.

Suddenly still, a clear view
of what you knew I wanted
to see.

When I resurfaced, slick grin,
knowing glance; you pushed me
back under.

I pretended to drown,
then swallowed you whole.