we are not sunk by the waves
sew your sails
“When we read about a boat we know that it has been sunk. Not by the waves but by the sails.”
This is the line I pluck out of a Gertrude Stein poem. I lift it up out of a cacophony of other statements I do not fully understand and tuck it next to me in bed. For a few nights, we sleep side by side. On the third day, I rise with the realization that I’ve lived such a life in the water with little thought to the sails. Truthfully, I’d forgotten boats need sails, and suddenly I’m certain that my legs can only split water behind me for so long before they’ll break off right above the knee, muscle and skin disintegrating in the salt water while my kneecaps sink to the bottom of the ocean floor where a spider crab will crawl into them, taking respite from the storm. I like the thought of something other than me making my bones a home.
I don’t remember learning how to swim. What I do remember is the salt and vinegar chips I would eat after each lesson, stinging my chlorine stained lips. I don’t remember when I started biting my nails. Only that, over time, there grew to be a certain satisfaction in ripping the nail off along with a little piece of skin. I don’t remember what date I re-entered my body this year. But I did, and I’m here. Just in time for here to be somewhere else entirely.
So climb up on your boat to the highest point, the lookout deck, and with your binoculars hanging around your neck, state your badness with your chest. There is no shame at sea, for there is no one but the crab in my kneecap to hear. I wonder if one day we must abandon our boats and swim back to Bethlehem to be counted. Wrapped in our sails, unfurling like a cape on dry land, will we be judged by our hands? Sentenced to a lifetime as a shipwright, calluses warp the tips of my fingers and the soft of my palms and the inside of my thighs where I once squeezed too tight.
Probably, I have a lot more to do with who I am than I care to admit. So I say: learn to swim as an exercise. But more importantly: gather oak, teak, mahogany. WARNING: these materials are bought by nothing easier to come by than the lessons of loss. Lose something, gain a mast. Lose someone, write up the building plans. Lose yourself, and only then will you possess the canvas needed to cut and sew sails strong enough to survive rough winds while flexible enough to withstand the breath of choice.
When we read about a boat we know that it has been sunk. Have you heard of the Titanic and the Lusitania and my own self-worth? Waves are inevitable. Crashing, licking, spraying messy fear. But we are not sunk by the waves. So I say, build your boat and sew your sails, and if your legs snap off, so be it. I have made it home just in time to be counted. I will make this home with my rough hands and missing fingernails and hazel eyes and porous bones.
Beautiful