Father’s Daughter, Mother’s Son
I have always known about the ocean inside of me, but when I was young, my father taught me about the world outside of our island.
He told me that stars were masses of energy produced by chemical combustion, travelling so far that by the time we could see it, the star itself would be long-dead. I glowed with this knowledge, capturing light in my hands, staring up into the highway of stars and being enveloped by the night, seeing a village of light transform into a cosmic graveyard full of ghosts.
In my chest I knew the stars were trapped pieces of sea foam, but my father laughed and told me “Son, Heraclitus was wrong.” I told him I was made of water, and he asked how water could hold together bones and flesh, bring blood to the brain. I stayed silent, but could taste the deep ache in my bones that knew another way, another reason, another life. By his logic, the air I was breathing was the same crisp, clear blue I saw mirrored in the South Pacific.
The sky breaks into bloom, my father told me, with such blue dominance because of physics.
Light energy travels in waves; red waves are long and spread out, blue waves are nestled close in choppy crests. These twisting beams of light travel in straight lines until they collide with objects that reflect, scatter, or bend their rays. When sunlight hits the Earth’s atmosphere, it explodes like a wave upon rocks into shards of sharp white foam, spread in all directions by the particles swimming in the air, dancing. This is why the air appears blue against the sky.
My father cleared his throat to break the lull of the waves, the abrasive sound of stepping on glass, and turned his back to me.
He walks away. I carry his ghost in my bone marrow, a relic of a life I could never perform, a cold reminder of where I came from. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
He walks away, and I walk into the ocean.
It is late now. Late and dark. Flecks of foam are painted across the night’s sky. The soft roar of the waves fills my ears and I slowly walk further into the deep.
The water is cold. It always has been.
She laps patiently at my ankles; she has been waiting for me since I was born. We both hold our breath as I push myself further into her embrace, out to the invisible barrier of the horizon.
My flesh rots and my blood is turned to water and my bones erode into sand
I remember the fear I felt when I first saw the ocean
I do not come up for air.
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