The language of water. The trees needles dip down like music notes on a page. Fingertips outstretched – muscle-free – voluntarily involuntary. Pine scent, a woodpecker’s home. Time of day or time of night. What once was a raccoon’s den is now a bird’s resting place – place to nest. To raise a family. My mind is pulling me towards housing prices and things I’ve heard professors and other experts say on CBC Radio One – it’s not about building more housing, it’s housing type that is the issue. Co-op housing will solve our problems – it was so cool in the 80’s that it flew under the radar. Why is everything a ‘thing’ these days – a ‘mega’ this – an ‘entity’ that. Doom scrolling on our way to coffin city, or urn town, or tree seed pod, or mushroom manure.
My sister hates rich people yet wants the lifestyle. So do I, I guess. Capitalism sucks but lemme have it. We have heart work though, I told her. Those kids you’ve helped, the twelve-year-old who everyone at the care facility seems to be afraid of – she laughs with you, I said. What is the pain one feels to come into someone’s life, especially a kid, and then feel that you are leaving too soon? Before you helped. Before they had support. Before they healed any small/BIG parts of themselves. I can’t imagine spending months with a kid who finally reaches out to hold your hand – to say – this poverty-line living cannot sustain me. This is as far as I think I can go on this one – that pain is big pain. That pain is her pain. I cannot feel her pain for her. I must stay on dry land – answer when she calls – remain calm and level-headed so she can call again, so she can cry, so she can unload some of her pain with me and I can bury it safely in the sand.
She doesn’t know this, but each night, when the tide comes in – her pain is washed out to sea – to be cleansed, to breed life, to twinkle like phosphorescence under a starry sky. To nourish barnacles – the same ones we cut our feet on as kids. To coat the seaweed with plankton to feed, to feed, to feed – all the way up the food chain.
I remind her to clasp her lifejacket as she steps in the inflatable boat, into our tide pool that our dad blasted with dynamite when we were kids.
She doesn’t listen or pretends to ignore me, so I give it a tug and the buckle clicks into place as she steps into the boat.
The rock is round and smooth and grey all around us. The sea is flat and blue and everywhere out front. We pack our butterfly nets to catch guppies and crabs, hermies (as we called them), starfish and bullheads.
The shells lay broken shining light up from the bottom. She caught my reflection and smiled until she noticed I was looking back.
where rivers are born 