Mahogany Browne writes verse that captures the suffocating intimacy of middle school friendship and its collapse. The unnamed narrator and her best friend Li have been inseparable, but as they approach high school, Li pulls away toward popularity and boys, leaving the narrator to navigate a world suddenly hostile and alone. The poems move through jealousy, betrayal, self-doubt, and the slow process of becoming oneself. Browne, a poet and activist based in Brooklyn, has spent years working with young people, and her language inhabits adolescent experience without condescension. The title comes from the chlorine sky above the swimming pool where the narrator finds momentary escape, the blue expanse offering relief from ground-level drama. Swimming becomes metaphor and refuge, a space where the body can be powerful rather than awkward. The poems are spare and punchy, meant to be read quickly but carrying weight that accumulates. Browne addresses colorism, the way darker skin marks the narrator for dismissal, and class, the way poverty constrains possibility. But the central wound is friendship, the particular devastation of being dropped by someone who knew you completely. Readers who remember the intensity of middle school bonds, or who work with young people navigating similar territory, will find this novel-in-verse both specific and universal in its portrait of growing up.