Arching Up In A Swell

We all know our fine lines. We can’t wash them away, and they only deepen with age. Some are more fluid than others, and we’re always most fluid with ourselves, but all lines have a watershed moment, a stack that leads to an infamous last straw, and I want to know: when is the last time my back was broken?

Recovery is real and rebuilding is important, but they’re just fancy words for change. Recovering and continuing is agreeing to adapt, and adaptations mend through metamorphosis. Is it mending if it becomes unrecognizable? If the previous iteration is buried deep beneath? Sunken? Paramount to recovery is choosing to fix or ruin. Fight or flee. Modification no matter the philosophy. Complexity does not mean a lack of values.

Why did I think I could steal from you? Maybe I didn’t think. Maybe I mistook your kindness for unconditional love, and maybe there was no love there at all. Not even the conditional kind. The kind that expects a call on its birthday. The love that claws like a corvid searching for food in the snow. Remembering that love cannot be stolen and kindness is quite conditional, I’ll ask again. Why did you think you could steal from me?

As the boat rocked, I claimed my own victimhood. The pain will subside, but for a while I’ll be tossed like I did to you, you do to me, and storms do each day to the sea. Wind and waves make prey of us. Arching up in a swell, the craft leans sharply for the starboard and my life cascades through the cabin as a beautiful, broken collection. Never do I doubt the swell will fall and rock us back portside. Never do I worry we’ll sink, although we could, and never do I abandon my ship. Angelina will sway, and the seas will calm. Inundation is inevitable but temporary and the sea follows a rhythm. I’ll claim that too.

At the end of the day, thieves ought to walk the plank. “You don’t steal from me and get away with it” argues the man who’s stolen so much from so many so successfully. Maybe on dry land I’ll be someone new. Maybe these are my adaptations, and I’ll continue them all my life.