Moorings

Salena Casha and Leigh Loveday

I’ll tell you the things I remember, then you can show me the things I don’t. How does that sound?

I remember the night you came in on the schooner. How I stood at the end of that long jetty, under a sky as high and remorseless as God. I remember the surf frothing against the old wood, catching itself on splintered edges while the clouds gathered.

So like you to rush off in the early hours, to take to the bay without a thought for the storm, then come back just the same way and expect me to be there.

I was there; of course I was. I remember that wait. I remember how my heart felt sharp and wiry, like it would slice open my palms if I hugged myself for warmth. Because of that, because of what had been done, I kept my arms at my sides, ignoring the wind’s solicitations.

All that waiting eventually shifted something in me, the tumblers of a lock snicking into place.

Picture it with me now.

The sky along the horizon dark with thunderheads. The boat leaning starboard on approach. The distance between us as grim and wide as a contaminated salt flat. Sluggish gray waves momentarily reshaped, piled high like bricks around you, a tunnel toward me. Away, away from the storm.

You tie up and disembark. A woman steps down behind you. Both of you pass by without a glance; I don’t call out or follow. But where the jetty crosses over to solid ground, you hesitate, bend your mouth to the woman’s ear, then turn back.

It’s so strange to see you stranding someone on land. Like a mirror in reverse.

I prefer this version already.

She and I raise hand to cheek at the same time, watching your slow ricochet. The wind picks up, and once again low waves slosh over the jetty. The wood blossoms with stains where you walk.

“This isn’t the way it happened,” you say, with a heavy glance over your shoulder. “You can’t pretend you came back.”

Rich, coming from you. Though not untrue. I'm no longer sure of how the moonlight looks, twisting down through the darkening water, jarred by the seething sea, but I feel how it holds me there still.

One of us is dead, and normally you’re good at not reminding me of that, but now you’ve brought the other woman here, haven’t you, and I can’t be both at once. Or did I do this?

Was the invitation mine?

“Show me,” I say.

The scene shifts and spirals. Instead of the jetty, we’re on the boat. After so long apart, the iron tang of the storm pierces my senses like nails into new wood. I stand on the edge. The boat rocks with the snapping wind. Your feet are planted on the deck behind me.

“Rose.”

It’s the first time I’ve heard my name in this in-between memoriam, and it shocks me cold. Other-Rose curls her toes around the precipice, doesn’t turn. I need her to step back so that she can break free from here with you, but instead she simply falls, falls forward, and is swallowed.

I want so badly to find the reinvention that sticks. But some things are not to be had.

The jetty unrolls beneath us again, and this time, past the threshold, there’s only night. Thunder burrs, too distant to be a comfort.

“I’m sorry, Rose.”

So you keep saying. It might even be true.

“I’ll find my way,” I say.

Still, you begin with me again.

Tell me the things you remember, then I can show you the things you don’t.

How does that sound?

AUTHOR BIO