I never learned to sail a ship, to strap and secure the ropes, to open the sail. I don’t think I know where I’d go, but I had set off into the ocean today.
My ship, weighed with boxed cargo carrying the heaviness sitting in my bones, sat docked near the shore where my old self lain in her teenage years, awaiting the day I’d leave her behind. To sail away, taking the unwanted with me, leaving her unscathed body to bathe in the sun’s golden rays of silent rain.
From the wave warping floors of the boat, my heavy hand flicked through the breeze and my lips whispered, “I’ll see you soon.”, to those who still had a string kept around my heart, praying if they’d pull hard enough I’d stay. With a pair of shaking scissors, I snipped at whatever had been left. Dropped myself from their lives like a dead weight before their eyes. Those hanging strings on the people I loved most dragged through the sand like tears as they watched me float away, leaving them in sagging, undisclosed agony forever. Like a long distance lover, I couldn’t take them with me. Couldn’t allow the weight of my sorrow to weigh their hearts to the floor, lugging them behind someone who only knew the way to hell.
I didn’t know what the ocean held for me, maybe another daunting future. One with more chaos and danger. Possibly more loneliness and songs of death whistled by mermaids. But I had only prayed for a stronger sun to rain down upon my troubled skin. Prayed that a world of the unknown would welcome a long lost, loveless stranger.
There had been no lighthouses to light the way, nor a map to guide me to safety, simply just the outstretched hand of darkness flooding through the abyss. The circular wheel of my boat steadied above calm waters drifting towards those fingers which promised a seamless journey to the gates of inferno. And while the ocean’s salted air tickled my skin, the wind whispered to me as well. I can steer your boat. I know the way. I let the earth take me where it’s heart desired, using the snapped strings of my heart to tie the sail and ensure a journey of the unknown. To hell or to heaven, I let the current be my fortune teller.