Yesterday, she went down to the bay and had it all to herself. Taking off her shoes, she sunk her toes into the cold damp sand. What will the sea feel like? she thought.
She undressed before she could register the wind-chill. She ran into the blue.
The water, wind-ruffled, greeted her body with short sharp bites. Her skin turned red and goosebumped. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. She screamed out loud nudging herself to stay within the cold embrace for longer.
Her breaths were shallow as she ducked her whole body under water. She came up, gasped for air, water trickling from her head back to the source, dripping over her wide toothed smile.
fly upon the wind white-grey gull of Spring take space expand your great wings
between their toes seaweed mushes it comes out of nowhere squeals and screams wet, cold skin meets cold, wet skin, pods pop, bones crack, the sea rolls in
A poem can start with the sound of water falling onto my body. Allow it’s curious wet teeth to sink into my flesh, to pull out chucks of questions to fuel a conversations with myself, later.
The ability to be present was a luxury my mother never had as she worked 3 jobs with her hand down toilets and fixed smile for the men with keys and brutal laughs.
I claim the ability to be present. To allow my yearning for a past to awaken a future I will imagine, as I salver my arms and legs and belly, housing a familiar homesickness I’m not sure where from, with coconut oil.
Turning cold hard oil, soft and warm against my skin, I reconstruct fragments of history, lost in colluded archives, and turn them into bleeding scars and pickled memories of somethings rather than nothings.
When I’m ready to forgive and understand, I’ll conjure Dad back from the dead, sit him down, and ask why he never ever mentioned love, in all his administering of disciplined care.
Dressed, hair twisted and walking across green fields, and under cherry blossom, I swallow doubts to turn a phase over and over against the roof of my mouth, rewriting with each footstep. Slide stepping cliches, kicking around experimental metaphors.
Or the poem could hit me full force when I walk into the coffee shop. Glasses steamed, journal in hand, eyes on drinks board, but already knowing my order by heart, the table I’ll take – number 13, my lucky number.
Acting like the fugitive from my life, here, I steal time to soften my gaze and repurpose the image of the sea into an open window that will startle you, dear reader, into a new perspective, into a new way of holding your mind and your heart towards yourself.
A poem can start with the sound of water Falling onto my body Allow it’s curious wet teeth to sink into my flesh pulling out chucks of questions to fuel a conversations with myself later
The ability to be present was a luxury my mother never had as she worked 3 jobs with her hands down toilets and grinning at men with keys and brutal tongues
I claim the ability to be present To allow my yearning for a past To awaken a future as I salver my arms and legs with cocoa butter.
Worn timber, cowrie shells, currency and shoreline, you sound like waves and the creaking hull of death.
I try to imagine, she said, what it would be like to be taken from all that I knew, moving in a stinking wooden vessel over something I knew not what to call but it swallows our bodies whole. See sea, sea see. Propped against a white wall to suggest a wave in motion, the angle of pleasure, as I witness it, from the other side, here and now, I rumble with displaced memories. Memories that traumatise but hold onto me like seeds buried within my hair, bearing into my flesh.
Living Wild Studios 