published as nonfiction in Ink Lit Magazine, 2023.
I find you in the bathroom, collapsed and crying in a heap on the floor like the pile of dirty laundry that keeps building and building; the one that we all ignore as we change our clothes. You’re cradling your head in your hands, shoulders shaking, limbs twisted into knots like a ball of tangled twine. I’m watching you unravel completely; watching you topple like a Jenga tower after too many rounds of pulling and piling, like a house of cards after releasing a too heavy breath. I’m a voyeur peeking into your window, watching the crowd-less show commence. You should’ve locked the door, or at least closed the curtains, because to me, before, you were always just a castle: impenetrable, fortified walls, with a shark-infested moat. I kept my distance, and you never released your bridge for me to cross. Now, I see the walls crumbling and I am so despairingly lost as each falling piece of stone reveals more withering pieces of you.
I ask myself: Who are you, if not my captain? My anchor? What seas are you sailing if you’re not steering my ship? I’m teetering, tipping, and sunk. Reality crashing like waves on a shore. You are no captain to me now, and perhaps you never were.
I fall to my knees at your skeleton and hug your quivering bones to my chest, feel your breaths like quick, sharp jabs of a knife to my sternum. When did you become so small, so gaunt, like a malnourished nix? I hold onto your fragile wings like I’m cradling a flighty and starved sparrow, threading brittle, cold fingers between my own, gentle as to not cause a break or snap, like clenching a splintery twig in my palm as I gather for a nest. I brush the hair on your head, yellow like straw, and coo like a pigeon, hushing your sobs, rocking back and forth like a breeze rustling leaves on shivering tree branches. It’s funny how roles reverse in time. Like the clock winding counter-wise. I want to hide you in my arms like you always hid me; tucked away and closing eyes like playing a child’s game of sardines: counting, tirelessly, counting, forwards and backwards from ten. Hanging worms over my lips and humming songs from your childhood, the same songs that now plague lulled memories of mine. My arms squeeze you in the shackles of my embrace as if the tighter I hold, the more I can cover you completely, shielding you from the blinding cruelty of this savage realm, and its unforgiving sun, like a bullet proof vest or a metal plate melded around the weakest heel, just like how you never let yourself feel. And now—
You’ve been hurt again. The men: my father; your father; my brothers; your children. The never-ending cycle. The never-ending game. Up and down, on and on, around and around. The world is a carousel that keeps spinning, playing its same repetitive melody until you forget to speak, and the stifling power of greed spreads like weeds, killing bountiful gardens of young, blossoming flowers, the roots embedded down so deep in the earth, they’re impossible to pull. You sniff into my neck, wet nose tucked like a dog in the nook between my head and shoulder blade, soaking your tears into the pores of my skin, absorbing like a sponge, staining like ink-soiled paper. I feel the responding burn building in the hull of my eyes, like smoke rising, bile coming up the throat, but then, in an instant, I swallow it back down. No longer can I cry—
When I remember how you raised me to float so that one day, I could hold the weight of your overwhelming wreckage, handle the transient tumult of the sea, and battle against the swirling, ravenous teeth as they threaten to pull me in like maelstroms, engulfing me whole, and dragging me under—
And now we’re here—
And I wish to resuscitate the fortitude within you, but I am barely managing to maintain my own, splashing uselessly for the peace of stable waters. I wish to trap your pain in a bottle and send it off, away from you, or me, or anyone else who could feel it, but the water is so polluted with pain, it has become impossible to escape. And, so, we are only left to blend our tears with the salts of the sea, holding onto our mothers and our daughters like buoys, as true boys are gifted their most beguiling play-toys—
And you raised me to float.
Shea Winters 