features_V16-1
Features Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Sayantani Dasgupta Interviewed by Keegan Lawler Features Volume 16.2
Carrying Instructions
Carrying Instructions by jane putnam perry To dowse is to search, with the aid of simple handheld tools or instruments, for that which is otherwise hidden from view or knowledge. The British Society of Dowsers Dowsing is very literal. The key to asking the right question correctly is to first realize that one question is almost never going to get the answer. The American Society of Dowsers ~ 1. I receive a neuropsychological report as part of legal proceedings after a head-on collision with a car. This is a page from that report. Dowsing Question Putnam genealogy from the author’s family Bible 2. From: Jane P. PERRY <jpperry@*******.***> Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2022 1:44 PMTo: Diane Rapaport <diane@*******.***>Subject: Family History Research Query Dear Diane Rapaport, I hope you are safe and well and have everything you need. I am interested in discussing your services for Family History Research. Specifically, I would like clarity on two family stories. We are purportedly related to the Putnams (who isn’t if your family lived in Salem Village in the 1600’s). My middle name is Putnam, and my Great, Great Grandfather Horatio Perry (b. 1816) married Serena Putnam (b.1818), which explains it, but I would like help learning which branch of the Putnam tree Serena came from, especially because of family story #2. My mother told me we are related to Rebecca Nurse, who was accused of being a witch in 1692 by the Putnam family and who was executed by hanging in Salem, Massachusetts. I have begun research numerous times and have collected all manner of scraps of paper, as well as some family ephemera, but I feel in a vortex. Are my needs of interest to you? Take care and please be safe, Jane Putnam Perry Dowsing Question I feel in a vortex. Are my needs of interest to you? 3. mud sticks weighting my lineage I come from soul sacred soil a mystery of possibilities fractured fissured clay like a heart hardened under horror generations of passed down hurt clotted footsteps of the booted seeking relief from their rage and harms saturate the blessed threshold draw into the cracks rest my language holiness is mindful blood and water and ethers exhumed the short-eared rabbit nibbles tender rain-soaked, sun-lifted leafing what kind of cloud calls out a vertical stack like layers under my feet exhale this d’earthly drought 4. Re: Progress Report External Inbox Diane Rapaport <diane@*******.***> Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022, 7:25AM to me Hi Jane, I have confirmed that Rebecca Nurse was not your direct ancestor, but you are a cousin of her great great grandson, Benjamin Nurse, because one of your Putnam great-great etc. aunts married Rebecca’s great grandson. I’ve also found the deed of Benjamin Nurse’s sale of the Rebecca Nurse farm to your 5th great grandfather Phineas Putnam in 1784. The Nurse homestead became your family homestead. That homestead remained in your own Putnam family for generations thereafter. You are directly connected to the land that Rebecca Nurse and her family called home. As to the 1692 Putnam accusers of Rebecca Nurse, the published Putnam family history that I’ve mentioned, which seems pretty reliable (and I’ll send you copies of relevant pages with my report), has some extended commentary about your 8th great grandfather Nathaniel Putnam. As you undoubtedly know, Nathaniel was a supporter of Rev. Samuel Parris and believed in witchcraft, but Nathaniel signed a petition in support of Rebecca Nurse in June 1692. He did accuse two other women of witchcraft, however, both of whom were executed. Best regards, Diane Diane Rapaport Professional Genealogist Dowsing Question “How must it feel to find yourself face-to-face with someone who has made it clear that he has the power to bring your world to an end, and has every intention of doing so?” ~ Amitav Ghosh in The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis 5. water in water out reckoning the sacred creation yoni from my childhood bring forth my inheritance wrap my memories sand warm and shaping bury us so only our faces show rhythms spray spirit sun breaks into pieces sparkling lens what a nice day dulse source of minerals harvested in the atlantic eat it raw take my children my mother’s ashes in smooth stones a berm separating water from residence but really connecting the two 6. This window was owned by Rebecca (Towne) Nurse’s birth family, photo by the author taken at “The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning & Reclaiming” exhibit viewed at the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, on loan from the originally-curated Peabody Essex Museum exhibit of the same title. Dowsing Question “In moments of injustice, what role do we play?” ~ asked by the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library exhibit “The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning & Reclaiming” 7. strong brown moist loam a history of breaking down and rising the soul spirit of maghemite magnetically removing contaminants sun-lit glittering ripples running like a school of baby mackerel jubilant ribbons of iridescent yellow green a commune of sparkles calling me to the shore to wade amongst the resting matriarchs their manes of bladderwrack breathing with the tide dissolved salts, minerals, and ions not impurities but part of the ancestral sitting with filtered to purity would burn your insides a plop of rain meets ground trickles over stone and soil scrapes against fish and gill carrying this story in ecological DNA 8. Water, a spirit puppet brought forth by the Nonviolent Direct Action Art Team of 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations. Photo Credit: Peg Hunter, journal.rawearthworks.com Nonfiction Home Art by Holly Willis
Take Care.
Nonfiction Home Art by Judith Skillman Take Care. by Nicole Morris The biopsy revealed the start of tooth and bone material, keratin and hair, the beginning and ending of what would have been my twin at conception. Located on the right side of my uterus, holding this flotsam and weighing just under a gram, the equivalent of a single raisin or a quarter of a teaspoon of sugar, was a tumor the size of a plump grape. We won’t have oncology’s final report for ten days, but it’s looking good. I don’t see any cause for concern. The surrounding tissue was clear, and it looks good. You did great. In my head I thought, how does a person unconscious, under the backward counting water of general anesthesia, do great? Did I take the medicine well? Or did she mean my body did great under the pressure of foreign instruments being inside of it? Did I do great with the stress of my skin opening under bright lights with masked faces? The origin story of my womanhood and the site of my motherhood the main character in the operating theater. Did my wounded womb do great in not fruiting cancer? The surgeon told me this very good news while looking past my shoulder at the chrome wall clock hung above a pastoral scene of baby animals circled together under a sunless blue. Breathe, the poster commanded. She avoided eye contact as she spoke to me, which struck me as odd, evasive even. But this is good news, doc. I wanted to say “Doc” the way Bugs Bunny did. Maybe she was lost in her own thoughts while she autopiloted this update. Was it too late in the day for a coffee? Would that ruin her sleep? Did she leave the chicken breast out to thaw? Would her son call that evening? Would he remember today was her birthday? Or maybe she was embarrassed to see me, the obediently sleeping patient, now awake, eyes open and unblinking. This peculiar girl, me, needing one ovary removed, along with a cyst, and while we’re at it, let’s tie up those tubes, too. Weeks before the procedure, this same doctor tenderly, softly, delicately, asked if I’d want to be sterilized while they were ‘in there.’ It would be painless, and my insurance covered it. Sure, I said. Fuck it, yeah, why not. I thought I saw her flinch internally at how easily I agreed to close down shop, to seal off the dam. I’d had two babies, now high schoolers; I saw no need to be greedy and ask the stork for more. Plus, I flashed on how liberating it would be to have unsafe sex with no fear of pregnancy. Sexually transmitted illnesses were always the lone bullet in the game of one-night stands and casual encounters; they were resolvable. Mostly. But an unplanned pregnancy in a country where politicians were pushing for murder charges to apply to abortion, that escalated the self-harm of Russian roulette to a wider and more permanent wound. Did she remember that conversation now? Or was she offended when I showed up for surgery this Tuesday, at five in the morning, in the newly remodeled outpatient wing of the Catholic hospital on the far east side of town, with a fresh Brazilian wax? In preparation for this procedure, even though no one would be going near my down there, I paid eighty-five dollars to have it all removed. It felt like a good-mannerly thing to do at the time. And an expensive gesture of anxiety at being naked in a room full of strangers. A Brazilian in the middle of a snowed-in winter up in the mountains of New Mexico during a dating slump when not a soul was visiting my down there was a cost I felt I needed to pay. A tax. A toll paid without being asked so that, while the surgeon would be bypassing that now hairless seam between my legs and going straight to the middle of me by way of lower abdomen into the uterus, landing on fallopian tubage, she would see that I went to painful and costly lengths to take care of my womanhood. What’s up, Doc? I said it without meaning to. I was thinking it, but now I’ve said it, interrupting her post-op care instructions. No water on the wound site for six days; no excessive activity; expect some spotting; no sexual intercourse for four weeks. Uh. I—she looked at me now. Shit, sorry, I offered. More embarrassed at my Bugs Bunny outburst than at the bit of drool that came with it. Why was my face numb? I can’t feel my face when I’m with you. Who sang that? The Weeknd. I need to remember to listen to that song on the drive home. Wait, when am I going home? Like she could hear my doped-up thoughts inside my head, she returned to my hearing ears now with, It’s fine. The anesthesia can have a euphoric effect. Makes some patients find themselves saying or doing things they normally wouldn’t. Yes. What? Oh. Sorry. I thought I heard a question in there. It took all of my facial muscles to not laugh. More drool. I lifted up my paw to wipe my face elegantly. With my paw. Wait that’s my hand. Why is it furry? Doc, I feel weird. Then I laid down on the paper-sheeted table I’d been sitting on. No memory of arriving in this room now. What time was it? I’ll close my eyes for a moment and get my shit together. That’s normal, you’re ok. The anesthesia will fade from your system in an hour or so. I have a note here that your ride is waiting for you. Can you hear me, Nicole? Ok good. I see you nodding yes. Your ride is here, er, Amir? Amir. He is ready for you,
I Was Waiting for My Turn and It Almost Killed Me
Nonfiction Home Art by Patrice Sullivan I Was Waiting for My Turn and It Almost Killed Me by Maureen Pendras Were someone to ask me now, after it all, the feeling of a dying organ, I’d still struggle for words. It might be better represented in sound. Something discordant, soft then growing louder but unnerving. You’d want to get up and move around; walk it off. Even better—a drawing. One panel: a swimmer moves about on the surface while underneath a large, dark shape lurks. Nothing yet has happened—but it will. The large shape kicks closer then recedes, in and out of focus. Impending doom. I would not be the swimmer, or the shape, or the water itself—but the totality of the thing, all of it together—about to become terrible. I was doing what they asked of me. Waiting. I didn’t think I should be waiting but what did I know? I was the one in the gown, with the pain, not the one holding the clipboard, making decisions. Initially, I’d had short, sharp pains in my abdomen—distinct and obvious. I tried to reshuffle the order of my body as I sat in my chair at work: lift up my ribs rather than rest them on my stomach; shift backwards and stretch out the line of my body; pull my head up like it was tied on a string—none of these movements helped. This feeling, like a cord stretched to its limit, would not go away. I called my doctor’s office to get an appointment that day. “It’s probably your appendix,” said the one available doctor, noting pain more on my right side. “Let’s get you downstairs for an ultrasound. They’ll get you in-and-out, then you can come back here, and we’ll go over it.” He nodded reassuringly and I felt some relief with the possible diagnosis. When I came back though, thirty minutes later, his mood had shifted. He stood at his workstation and there was no avuncular looking it over together. We stood right there in the hallway as he explained: “Call a surgeon,” he said flatly, shaking his head. “You’ve got an eleven-centimeter mass in your abdomen.” “A surgeon?” I asked. I imagined quiet conversation and time consider options. Mostly I imagined time to think. When I asked him if I’d be able to work the next day, he looked dumbfounded and repeated, “You need a surgeon.” I was thinking about the wrong thing. Even in this swirl, I noticed a question looming there, just say it, just ask him, “But it’s not cancer?” Was I even supposed to say the words? Admit its potential in my mind? I was in superstitious territory, maybe this was like the devil, or rain, you speak it and there it is. I watched him, studied him the way the rabbit studies the hound, alert to every twitch. He shifted his weight backward, away from me and averted his eyes. I thought, I am in trouble. His words were nondescript, something like, “We don’t yet know,” but the body language read, get it together, this is bad. The chaos in my head made me feel like I had taken off on a merry-go-round, fruitlessly searching for a still point and trying not to throw up. I was still grappling with his initial directive: call a surgeon. Like there wasn’t even time to go find one, I needed to be talking with one already. And already I was behind. I did call a surgeon. I remembered I knew one—my OB—I’ll call her Dr. A, someone I’d known since I was eighteen years old. But she had just retired from doing surgery. She set me up with one of her partners—Dr. B—for later that day. Dr. B looked me over quickly. I told her of the pain and that I was having trouble eating. She felt my pulse, looked at my tongue, checked my chart and said, “Hmm, I’m going to admit you to the hospital. Wait here.” I waited two hours to be admitted, like waiting for a hotel room to be cleaned and cleared. I sat in Dr. B’s waiting room, eyes closed, willing every part of my body to slow down. I was getting myself to the place I needed to be. Slow, steady breaths, one by one. I could make it; I would make it. When the bed was ready, I walked slowly over to the seventh floor. Before I went up though, I found the hallway with my dad’s picture in it. It was an old hallway connecting buildings off the beaten path. There—housing the photos of the Chiefs of Staff for the hospital—was my dad. He had died twenty-five years before from a brain tumor. But in this realm—his realm—he sat still and confident. Handsome and familiar. I made a silent plea, help me. I so wanted him looking over my shoulder. Then kept my steady pilgrimage to floor seven. The nurses seemed surprised to see me. I said, “Hi, I’m being admitted. I’m a patient. My doctor called earlier.” I felt a need to explain myself as they looked doubtful, pursed lips, sharp tilt of the head. I seemed to be doing this all wrong. But they checked “the board,” and there was my name. I had a place. Their faces eased; I got into a gown and slowly laid back into bed. I was dehydrated, hungry, and panting to get my breath, butterfly pulse. Once I had an IV and pain meds, Dr. B came in at the end of her day. “Wow, you look so much better. I thought you were crashing. We’ll get you an MRI, maybe do the surgery tonight. I should get the results around
Fears, Explained
Fears, Explained by Kayla Jessop After A. Papatya Bucak’s “I Cannot Explain My Fear” I have a fear of spiders, snakes, and bees. At my favorite brunch spot downtown, a bee kept flying around my head even after I wished it away. It landed in my mimosa moments later and drowned in the sweet nectar of orange juice and champagne. The waitress brought me another. I have a fear of red ant piles. Once, my grandfather accidentally stepped in one while mowing his yard. When the little bites didn’t heal on their own after weeks, he went to the doctor, and they found cancer in his bloodstream. I’m afraid of swimming in the pool alone, swimming in the ocean without people close by, and floating on an inflatable in the river. I saw a movie as a kid where an alligator came up from under the water with its mouth wide open and swallowed the relaxing woman in one go. Their death roll scares me, too. I have a fear of thunderstorms. The thunder causing the house to shake makes me think of a picture falling off the wall and giving me brain damage. Motorcycles and scooters scare me. Two tires don’t create enough balance to protect my lack of it. I’m scared of restroom door handles, gas pumps, and restaurant silverware. I have a fear of Russia. I didn’t sleep for two days when there was talk of going to war with them. I live in a major city– we would be an easy target. Asteroids, meteors, and falling satellites make me scared. I have a fear of dragonflies after they were used as a way for the dead wife to communicate with Kevin Costner in the movie Dragonfly. Ghosts, ouija boards, and the dark scare me, too. When I visit my mother’s grave, I’m afraid each step I take near a headstone to get to hers is going to make a ghost angry and follow me home to punish me. I’m more afraid my mother’s ghost won’t visit me. I have a fear of scales, carbs, and calorie trackers. Shopping for jeans and little black dresses gives me goosebumps. I’m afraid of fireworks because of a Fourth of July celebration that ended with everyone fleeing from the outdoor venue because of a possible active shooter. I’m afraid of ditches because it was hard for me to climb out of the one we hid in once the police arrived to secure the area. I’m scared of Easy-Bake Ovens because I don’t know how they work. I cannot explain my fear of scarecrows. I’m scared of AIs, my Amazon Alexa, and the camera on my laptop because they’re probably spying on me. I’m worried I made my sister afraid of deer because I make her look out for them when I drive in the dark, terrified of hitting one. When I was a kid, I was afraid of dogs because they were loud and liked to jump. My family still makes fun of how I used to be now that we have a dog. I have a fear that the gum I swallowed when I was seven is still in my stomach. I’m even more scared of the idea that my stomach won’t hold life in it after being on birth control for ten years. Relationships and love scare me. I’m afraid of marriage because my mother was miserable during hers. I’m more afraid of divorce because she was too heartbroken after her marriage to love again. Airplanes, cars, and buses scare me, too. I’m afraid of the words “no” and “yes” but prefer to say “yes.” I’m afraid of Costa Rica because my boyfriend wants to propose to me there. Sharks, iguanas, and rogue monkeys live there, too. Nonfiction Home Art by Keegan Baatz
Something So Simple
Something So Simple by Wendy Fontaine When the Head Start teacher reported my daughter’s trouble with routine eye exams, I shook my head. My child, age three, could see just fine. Not only was she already reading, she could tell me the color of Mrs. Leclerc’s flowers hanging on the porch across the street. She could say the color of the car parked two houses down in Mr. Romano’s driveway. Little did I know, Angie couldn’t see those things at all. She’d simply memorized her surroundings during our afternoon walks around the neighborhood. At the teacher’s suggestion, I made an appointment with a pediatric optometrist who later diagnosed Angie with astigmatism and amblyopia. Her vision, he said, was 20/200, meaning she needed 20 yards to see what others could see at 200. Meaning she was legally blind. Her first pair of eyeglasses came from Sears. Purple, inscribed with the name Hannah Montana – her favorite TV character at the time. No bigger than a deck of playing cards, they cost two hundred dollars, none of it covered by medical insurance. I put the total on my credit card. I was a single mother at the time, and the amount was exactly one week’s pay from my part-time job as a secretary. When we got home from the store, Angie sat cross-legged on the living room floor, took off her new glasses, and broke them in half. She’d heard the sales lady at Sears say that when little kids don’t like their glasses, they break them. We went back to the store the next day and bought them again. Later on, when Angie learned how to swim, things got much more complicated. ** Swim goggles were invented in 14th century Persia, where divers used tortoise shells polished to near transparency to go searching for pearls. By the 18th century, they’d devised wooden goggles with deeper frames that trapped a layer of air to improve visibility underwater. However, those goggles only worked when the divers looked straight down. As soon as they turned their heads, the air escaped, filling their goggles with water and rendering them useless. They had no choice but to squeeze their eyes tight and float back to the surface. ** Seven years after the Hannah Montana glasses, Angie got her first pair of prescription swim goggles. Up until that point, she’d been taking lessons and getting by with the one-size-fits-all goggles sold in the lobby at the pool. But when she made the junior competition team, she needed something stronger to see better underwater. Contacts were not an option since the lenses can absorb pool water and trap bacteria against a swimmer’s eyes. One day after school, I drove to an optical shop downtown, where Angie picked from the owner’s catalogue. Tony sold a thousand kinds of glasses but only one kind of swim goggle. The singular choice came in the color of the frame: blue or green. Angie asked for blue. Because her prescription was severe, her goggles needed to be custom-made. Give ‘em two weeks, he said, then charged me four hundred dollars. ** In 1911, an Englishman named Thomas “Bill” Burgess donned a pair of motorcycle goggles to breaststroke across the English Channel, which he successfully did on his 16th attempt. The goggles were not waterproof, though they did protect his eyes from splashes during the swim, which he completed in twenty-two hours and thirty-five minutes. Fifteen years later, his protégé Gertrude Ederle did him one better by using paraffin to seal her motorcycle goggles and becoming the first woman to freestyle across the channel. She endured fourteen hours and thirty-four minutes of strong waves and jellyfish stings. The press called her “Queen of the Waves.” ** Sometimes at swim practice Angie’s coach writes instructions on a white board at the edge of the pool, which of course my daughter can’t see. Sometimes that coach observes Angie not doing what she’s supposed to be doing or talking to the swimmer in the next lane over and assumes she’s goofing around. Really, she’s asking her teammates what the whiteboard says. Sometimes the coach calls her out of the pool and makes her do extra pushups on the hot concrete deck. On those days, she comes home with aching shoulders and bleeding fingers. I email the coach about my daughter’s vision issues, but that whiteboard always returns. Angie does the pushups anyway, knowing they will only make her stronger. ** In 1940, Popular Science magazine printed detailed instructions for readers interested in making their own wooden goggles at home. “With a little care and patience,” the writer explained, “you can construct diving goggles exactly like those used by the spear fishermen of the South Seas and expert Hawaiian divers!” ** At a swim competition during the pandemic, when parents were not allowed on deck, Angie’s goggles broke at the start of a relay. She’d already climbed up onto the block and prepared to start her dive when suddenly the nosepiece snapped. The lenses split apart, and the goggles fell around her neck. In a flurry, she tossed them aside and dove in for her portion of the swim – the anchor leg of the 4×50 freestyle relay. She had no choice; her team was counting on her. She swam hard, goggle-less and blinded, her eyes exposed to the harsh chlorinated water. Still, her team took first place. Her eyes stung for the rest of the day, but her smile never wavered. ** The first pair of commercialized goggles, which came in only one style and one size, appeared in an advertisement in Slimming World magazine in 1968. Marketed as aids for swim training only, they were not considered for use in competitions. They were for workouts only – for observing strokes underwater and protecting the eyes from irritation. One year later, British inventor Tony Godfrey developed a goggle made of polycarbonate, a plastic known to be thin, lightweight and shatter resistant. Swimmers, including some Olympic hopefuls,
Nonfiction_V16-1
Nonfiction Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Carrying Instructions by jane putnam perry Non-Fiction Volume 16.2 I Waited For My Turn and it Almost Killed Me by Maureen Pendras Non-Fiction Volume 16.2 Take Care by Nicole Morris Non-Fiction Volume 16.2 Something So Simple by Wendy Fontaine Non-Fiction Volume 16.1 Yellowfin by Abby McCord Non-Fiction Volume 16.1 Fears, Explained by Kayla Jessop Non-Fiction Volume 16.1
Yellowfin
Nonfiction Home Art by Alice Stone-Collins Yellowfin by Abby McCord There’s a delicate painting of koi fish on the porcelain bottle my mom pours her sake from. My dad and brother are discussing politics, their voices muffled over the music. We are sitting in a Japanese restaurant; the light is dim but illuminates each table and our faces in a soft, warm glow. Various staff rush behind me with boards of fresh sushi and steaming bowls of chili garlic noodles. Our waitress emerges from the chef hats and smokey pans as she brings out our food: ginger salad, miso soup, vegetable tempura, and rolls of sushi we share. On the plate sits a decadent Philadelphia roll with salmon roe and a dynamite maki roll with yellowfin tuna. The yellowfin is red like a pomegranate—slightly pink but rich and deep. I reach for a piece with my chopsticks and devour its bright taste as if it came straight from the salty waters. Yellowfin tuna typically reside in the epipelagic zone, the surface layer of the ocean that mixes with waves, wind, and raw heat from the sun as if it were freckled. At its base is the thermocline, the zone where temperature drastically drops and descends into deep, indigo water—the hidden, pale skin of the ocean. Yellowfin are strong schoolers; they swim in a strange synchronized fashion as if they are an intricate ballet following an unseen director. The restaurant is full for a Sunday night. I wonder why all these people are here and if it’s for the same reason as us—a distraction from the holiday break’s inevitable end or to soak up the moments with our loved ones before splitting across the country to different homes. To the right of us are two men in their twenties. They drink beer and wear hats and hunch their gym-addicted shoulders to watch a game of soccer on their phones. They don’t look at each other but are still together in their own way. I can tell they think the waitress is pretty by the way their eyes soften when she walks by. To the left of us is another family; the parents sit closely while their adolescent daughter is across from them. Her glasses sit lopsided as she rests her chin in her hand and impassively pokes the table with a chopstick. I wonder what brings her melancholic expression, if she’s experiencing the confusion of being a teenager or maybe missing an older sibling who couldn’t come home for the holiday. I wonder if she’s navigating the dark water for the first time. Directly behind our table is a wooden wall that splits the restaurant into two sections. It’s some type of glossy oak also illuminated in a soft glow. A long, stringy plant sits on top, its vines daintily traveling down the polished wood. Somewhere in a gap of the plant’s speckled leaves, I spot another version of me across the restaurant. She is 18 years old, sitting on the edge of a booth, shoved beside her boyfriend at the time and his friends she doesn’t know. Six years ago, on homecoming night, dressed in heels and hairspray and uncertainty, sitting in a Japanese restaurant. As if a wave drags me under its current, I am thrust over the oak wall to be by her. I swim and tumble into her energy as the temperature drops and my vision blurs in shades of indigo. She is navigating the dark water. I watch her closely, remembering her mind and the way it works. Her dress hugs her stomach in ways she doesn’t like, but she wonders if a subtle suggestion to what was underneath would impress him. She crosses her arms in her lap and smiles as he laughs with his body turned away from her. She desperately wants to hide her pale skin, although she cannot hide her freckling shoulders from coming to the surface. I know her contentment is only a fragile shell she inhabits. She knows somewhere deep within her there is me, a version of her that knows what it’s like to swim in the sun-kissed waters. She doesn’t know I am standing beside her, that I have always been with her, even in the dark water. I want to scream I am here I am here I am here. She sits small with her shoulders low and razor-nicked legs crossed as if the space will burst if she takes up too much of it. She picks at her fried rice with her fork, stirring the steam until there is none left. Her gaze finds the interlaced fingers of the couple next to her as she notices the empty space in between her own. When I reach for her, another wave thrusts me under its current, and I am being pulled over the oak wall again. I desperately claw and cry to her so I can tell her all the things she needs to hear: you do not need to fear being alone or taking up space or wandering into uncertainty. Somewhere, somehow, I am with you, and I know all the beauty and pain and heartbreak and love you have yet to feel. Trust me—let your world crack and burst and you will finally see how tenderly sunlight dances upon your skin. Her innocent, uncertain eyes only catch a glimpse of me. But I know, in this one millisecond transcending across years, she hears me. Breathless and drenched in an enigmatic feeling, I am placed back into my seat; warm, gentle water swirls around me. There are still discussions of politics and sake to be sipped. Our rolls of brightly colored sushi have diminished to clumps of sticky rice and chopstick-poked wasabi. The yellowfin has been eaten. I look through the gap in the leaves but only see an empty table. In this fleeting moment—where the four of us sit under a