YMCA

The man who sells us pizza
moonlights here, lambasting
women on stationary bikes

up imaginary hills. His class,
my friend says, always fills.
There is something touching

about this: a man’s unwanted
flair for browbeating
transformed into an asset at last.

I know some misery finds
the Y, too. A beginner folded
into a gi’s starch cries.

Round kids and rangy kids
climb out of the pool in tees
that cling, a second skin

more conspicuous than skin.
Outside the tiny door
to a racquetball court, an EMT,

a wheeled cot. But it is easy,
scoured by these borrowed
towels, to love the others.

In chair yoga, the old
throw their arms slowly
open. A teenager teaches

a child to swim. The lifters
take turns standing over
each other, heaviness

between them. And the girl
whose parents made her come
with, who finds a treadmill

among the stalwart walkers
and the distance runners
ice has forced indoors,

who plugs her headphones
into the TV and leans
on the machine, ass against

guardrail, eating Cheetos,
never even shuffling her feet–
her I might love most of all.