By Ouanessa Nana
I went to the lake’s deepest depths, my eyes scanning the spirals of the wind, a mirror of my heart nestled between his ribs.
The weather today is unpredictable and unforgiving, it lashes out. Despite the sudden cold, I refuse to put on my jacket, letting the frost nip at my skin harshly, hoping it is strong enough to erase the memories of him that burn me. I have been in agony, tormented by the ghost of him for months. My oars catch onto a fish. Its shiny purple scales scatter along the surface. I still trudge through murky water, unable to see what lies beneath. The emotional turmoil, the grieving, the tethered bonds that are now snapped and frayed, refusing to release me.
The oars begin to catch against the strong currents, slicing through the waters, my muscles aching from the strain. I should be back in the village, laughing with my friends as we kicked around rocks and sharing rice milk with my sister. Instead, I am here, where I thought would be paradise but now I see that I was wrong. My small brown dress does nothing to keep me warm. I think about home and how I would be better off where I was, buried under my thin blankets, counting until my lungs betrayed me and allowed me to breathe.
The blood in the water is far more than a stain, it’s a tarnish that remains, adjusting the soil and leaving the crystalized stones and glittering water a murky green and brown color like my soul. They warned me about him. The monster of the deep. I still think that if I had stayed under the surface a little longer, let the air burst from my lungs he would still be here, in my arms, a flashing heat against my chest.
Now he is a myth. A warning that is ingrained in the roots of my elbow, my heart a fragile sore tissue, allowing grief to poison every inch, a sore spot that has offered a place for despair to live. He shouldn’t have affected me like this, been able to leave his mark on me but I couldn’t ignore the sirens, the music that sounded so good when he was near me.
Everyone is scrambling for my mistake. The fishermen are paralyzed at the dock, the shops have been shut down, and we are down to our final loaf of bread.
In Meader Town, the water is always afraid. They say it is like the brain, unflinching, no response to pain, and dangerously hungry. They are wrong. The brain can get hurt, it feels every stab that sharpens and every violent outburst that fractures, it is the reason the heart stops beating and our limbs shatter into a numbness I can’t pull. It is my phantom, my haunting barely staying above water, my oar, attaching the waves and my heart burning a new wound, a puncture filled with regret and anger, the sadness just a nick of blood from the lacerations my mind is suffering from.
My mom was at the hut, gathering whatever she could salvage for dinner. It would be what we have been eating for the last few months, salt and pepper soup with chicken skin, served in a small wooden bowl. Even after hunger strikes against my gut, I still can never beat it. I can never get used to resisting my stomach’s desire to be full. She was why I was here, in the middle of nowhere, scouring for flounder, my net trawled with seashells, barely worth anything. But it would make a dent in the shack, a small penny towards the towering soldiers that pressed their hands against our necks.
I would have drifted through the wreckage, I thought as I wrench my oars through the water, my skin drenched. Each stroke makes me feel further away from recovery, the finish just the tip of the iceberg of the slightest edge.
How long would I feel like this? Burning for a moment, a fallacy that strangled me, oozing with treachery and indolence.
Another wave hits me, dribbles with disdain and I miss the trout that flicks in the air in front of me. The boat stills as I stop, water quickly filling the inside as I sink.
The memories of him blur and I question whether he ever loved me. It has short-circuited me and the emptying chiseled the inside of my bones. I don’t know how I found the strength to grasp things, to smile and…
The currents are just like my deep cuts, tearing against me.