- She hears the ship splinter and crack.
- It shudders and is pulled through the seatop
- out of the known world
- down into some other, terrifying realm
- where air cannot fill its sails,
- where weight and darkness rule.
- The spar she holds with bleeding fingers
- is ripped away by the fierce water,
- purposefully, as if it has better uses for it
- than saving her life.
- The sea shoves, presses, twists her about,
- bruising her, hating her.
- Her long cotton dress,
- the thick petticoats beneath,
- all heavy with seawater,
- pull her downward.
- She fights to stay in air,
- seeing the rescuer,
- willing him to see her.
- He has found her sister,
- has hauled the girl up
- out of the hateful sea
- into his small wood boat.
- Look this way.
- Here I am, too, in the sea.
- Sister, tell him to look for me.
- She rises with a swell,
- joyful to be carried up
- despite her leadenness,
- to be borne closer to the white sky.
- but the high ridge becomes a valley,
- and she is taken down
- where they surely will not see her.
- She rises again to see
- their backs are turned.
- Look here, look for me!
- But she sees no searching eyes,
- only the blue arm of the fisherman
- around her sister's back,
- holding her safe in a wooly brown blanket.
- Drained of strength, she loses the air
- and is pulled through and down.
- No longer able to fight the water,
- still she wills the man
- to know where she is,
- to fetch her back
- up into the light, the air.
- Look down here.
- Let loose the child in your arms.
- Come down here.
- Pull me into your small wood boat.
- But he does not come.
- Eyes tightly closed against
- the silent world she has entered
- she can still see their backs,
- their safe, floating, breathing backs.
- Damn them.
- She opens her eyes
- to what surrounds her now
- and sees a garden of seavines
- reaching up to entwine her.
- She flails at them, furious,
- gasping for air, she is filled by the water
- and sees nothing more.
- She is back. She is here. She is angry still.
