First there is smoke.
Fire.
Wind.
Then the sea.
There is always the sea.
You think you are broken. Scattered into a thousand jagged pieces, but when you reach the sea you are whole. Painfully, heartbreakingly whole. And alone.
When you walk out of the sea you are dry, but you’re too busy screaming to notice.
Smoke. Fire. Wind. Sea. Your feet are pressed to solid ground, but your mind is still falling, still trapped, still reaching for…
You don’t know.
It’s the strangest thing.
“Hello,” says a young Black man whittling on the beach.
You wonder at the old-fashioned suspenders dangling from his loose, canvas pants. “Where am I?” you ask.
He spreads his arms, gesturing at the beach. “Here,” he says. And this makes sense to you.
You are here. Now. Nothing else matters.
Soon, you will forget you ever walked out of the sea.
The island isn’t heaven, but it has everything you need. A strange, but not unpleasant, hum runs through the earth, into your bones. Stay, it says. And you do.
The people are kind, but distant. Many are oddly dressed. They come and go. Sometimes they wander by. Sometimes you’re on the island alone. Once, a tired-looking white woman in a 19th century dress walked out of the water and warned you, “The island gives, the sea takes.”
When you’re feeling brave, or reckless, you walk calf-deep into the water and remember his laughter. See his head thrown back and the crowded, narrow milk teeth with the molar about to erupt. You come unmoored, but you manage to wade further and, there, in the small waves sloshing against your thighs, is the word— the one you’re stunned you could forget. Mama! A chain around your heart yanks you deeper into the blue, toward the fathomless dark. MAMA!
Smoke. Fire. Wind. Sea.
You emerge from the sea. You’ve been through this before, you’re sure of it. The island won’t let you remember, but the heart has muscle memory. You’ve spent lifetimes in the water, eternities, searching, but the sea is vast and he is so small.
When you feel the darkness threaten to suck you down deep, to a despair you can’t swim out of, you surface.
The cycle repeats. Every time you walk out of the sea, the island welcomes you and you forget. A relief.
A gift.
The island is a fever dream where it is always now and never before or after. You’re safe in the now, where your thoughts don’t wander beyond the breeze in your hair or the sand under your feet. You’re safe here.
Only when you stand on the shore and watch the small waves undulate in a steady rhythm against the sand— approach and recede, approach and recede, do you feel the presence of a past. A hazy history hovering at the edge of your mind.
There is no night on the island. No dark. You begin to wonder if there’s something in the dark the island doesn’t want you to see. You notice the quiet encouragements under the island’s soothing hum. You begin to think the island wants.
You find yourself standing at the edge of the water more and more. The young whittling man joins you sometimes. Or maybe he’s always there but you’re only sometimes aware.
“Go on,” he says, not unkindly.
“Go?”
“Out there.”He points to the sea. “Go find what you lost.”
Here on the shore, with the water lapping at your toes, you sense the truth in his words. Something’s been taken from you. Something the island can’t give. Something you would never stop searching for.
Still, you stare at the endless water, uncertain. “It’s dark,” you say.
He clicks his tongue. “How can you find the light, if there isn’t any dark?”
You must choose. Land or sea. Safety or possibility. You look around at the island and its hollow pleasantries. Feel the subtle wrongness in the earth. The island doesn’t give, it takes.
You dive into the sea.
Time moves. Memory rushes in.
Smoke. Faint at first. By the time you’re certain that’s what you’re smelling, Mama, look!
Fire, out the window, gorging itself on the wing, hungrily spreading until
Wind rips you from the plane. Your baby’s terrified scream— already too far away— pierces you as you’re reaching, twisting, breaking apart. Falling for hours, days, eons. Until finally, you reach the
Sea.
The pain threatens to crush you. The fear that you’re alone down here—that there is nothing left but empty blackness—engulfs you. It would be easy to turn back, but you’ll never find the light in this dark if you do.
And there must be light.
Wherever he is, there is light.
You focus, calling up the moments the island stole from you.
Soft sweaty curls and baby fat cheeks warm against your breast. The sour-sweet scent of his skin. Sticky kisses. Tiny hands wrapped around your fingers. The music in his voice when he greets you. Bliss.
Fear dissipates in the wake of so much love. You keep swimming down, down into the dark. The black gives way to grey. The grey becomes a blinding white. A swirling, pulsing glow at the bottom of the sea beckons. You reach for it.
Small fingers grab your hand and pull you into the light.
“Mama!”
