A Woman goes to Sea

| by Annabelle Sami |

A Woman goes to Sea. It’s a cold day with a fierce wind. The waves roar and slick pebbles slip underfoot. She is alone on the shoreline - no one else willing to be battered by freezing salt air. Thick clouds hang low above; Sea rises up to meet them. A scattered plastic bag tumbles by, catching on a piece of driftwood. She picks it up - stuffs it in her pocket — there’s a bin on the way back home. A shiver.

She has come here, as has become her tradition, feeling lost.

Seeking answers to questions she hasn’t quite formed yet.

Breathing in a large gulp of gale & salt & foam she calls out to Ocean. Calls its names.

Sea !

Ocean !

Mother !

Goddess !

Aphrodite !

Yemaya !

Tefnut !

Friend !

There is a lull in the tide before Sea responds. She doesn’t always respond. But this time she does. A calm, sweet voice, a beckoning siren.

Yes my child, I hear you. I feel you close. You who carried my water in swinging plastic buckets, to and fro on tiny feet. You who sobbed, heartbroken, to leave me behind at the end of a long sunny day. You who bathed in me, naked, then in costumes, bikinis and frills as you grew. I know you.

And I know you. I knew you before I knew myself. Saw the colour of my skin reflected in your sand. The dark of my eyes in your stones. I didn’t know who I was, but I knew where the sand banks formed, and that waves come in groups of three, and how to wash your feet and dry them without getting more sand in your shoes. I knew I was a child of Sea.

But you left me.

The Woman pauses. Surf splashes at her feet. A tear?

She did leave, as many do, from the tiny towns that contained them. But she comes back, she always comes back, she can’t not come back.

Ocean wails now, suddenly, the screech of a seagull.

You left me! You have all left me! Betrayers!

The Woman recoils, steps back from the encroaching shoreline. The plastic in her pocket slips out and floats into Ocean, beyond reach. Poison in solution.

No!

Humans come to me for healing. Yet I am filled with your waste, your excrement, your toxic bilge. You feed the sacred ashes of your loved ones to waters deemed too unsanitary to touch. You think me blind, but I who am filled with the eyes of a million creatures, see who you really are.

Tears now. Ocean falls from the Woman’s eyes. She has come to Goddess for clarity, but is asking for salvation from a body she has done little to protect.

Pipelines pump.

Sewers burst.

She opens her mouth to beg her Friend’s forgiveness, but images flood her mind.

Shoes washed up on the shore from rubber dinghies Sea has eaten.

A wall of water as tall as a skyscraper; carrying boats, houses, trees.

A huge iron ship, chained to the harbour in the seaside town where her Grandmother lives. Trapping innocent men. Holding them prisoner.

Floodwater.

Riptides.

Burst banks and ruined crops.

The rain starts now, a fine drizzle at first, falling heavier with each minute.  A sheet of water falling from the sky so that now the air and the ground around the Woman is all water. Water in air. Water in earth. Water in breath.

She is choking.

The Woman wants to turn away, like Sea has turned away from her. From humanity. But she stands amongst water and speaks.

I do not understand you. You scare me.

A huge roar, the sky breaks.

Ha! You want my frothy shoreline but not my sucking currents. The ice and sludge and gnashing teeth. You want to trample my shores and heave into my waters, but resent my very nature. I kill. I will kill again. I am life and death. I always have been.

You do not ask Fire why it burns.

The Woman’s head spins and she kneels in the wet stones. Perhaps from despair. Or perhaps in horror and admiration at the altar of the world. She asks:

How can this water still be healing? How can it be home?

How can the water still be healing? How can it be home?

Give me the answer.

Give me the answer.

Receiving only echoes now and gazing out at the endless expanse before her, the Woman sighs out heaviness. That strange relief of being so small in the presence of something so endless. It brings some comfort.

The world is as vast and full of possibilities as Ocean before her.

The rain eases. The water calms greatly. No more roiling waves, no more crashing surf. It is still.

A mirror.

She closes her eyes. Senses awaken. The tang and rot of seaweed. Shushing waves, pulling stones in and out. Cool dampness.

I am a child of Sea.

I am a child of Sea. I am all of it. I am not just sandcastles in the summertime but riptides and mudslides too. Whirlpools and rock pools. I am life and death. I am in Ocean and Ocean is in me.

You birthed us, and in return, we make you into whatever we want you to be.

She waits for Mother to respond but nothing comes. No echoes, no comforting words, but no lashing tongue either. Sea just is.

The Woman opens her eyes and watches for a while longer. The storm is passing, as storms tend to do. The answers she sought are as clear as sand disturbed on the ocean floor; swirling, unclear and chaotic. 

Yet, with the promise that they too one day will settle, revealing themselves as bright, colourful shells winking in the sunlight.

A Woman thanks Sea. 

She rises and walks home.