Secrets Between the Seas

It does not do to be frightened of things about which you know nothing,” he said. “You are like children, afraid of the dark.” - Donna Tartt

An Introduction

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said: No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so. I think I disagree. Those small matters are arguably of more importance than long term events, if you think about it. And I think I’ve come to realize that thinking is what I’m best at. It helps me to find reason in the grotesque, the picturesque in the not-so pretty, the big in the small, the pirate ship in the paper boat. The following pieces are a product of burdening my mind with small matters, and not for a very good reason. I present an anthology of my inner workings as they are.

Secrets of Sins

Every day I fear I will be welcomed by the wrong people; brought to a place where nothing shines, a darkness I am told I resemble. I’m taught that I am the monster children fear, that I deserve no more than those who spit on cattle and kill with red hands. Their rules and their stories hit me like a hurricane, filling me with so much rage. Rage for how far I’ve let myself go, how deep I’ve fallen into the hole of sin that I cannot return from no matter how hard I try. And I wonder if they might be right. Am I evil? Do I bear the darkness told of in tales of malice and turpitude?

Every day I wake up and hope that no one should ever know my thoughts: the fantasies I conjure and confide in, consuming them immediately should someone see them. running away with another like me, who has come face to face with the same monstrous teachings, looking at drawings of others like us burned at the stake; how putrid the smell of their crumbling bones, and how I wish that won’t ever be me. But I fear it is likely.

Every day I wonder if I am to be next; if somehow they all know and are planning my execution as I now speak. Will the burning of my body satisfy them? Will my blood on their hands bring them joy? The need to cleanse this town of sin fills them, and I'm first on their list. The woman who lied. The woman who lies. But that’s not why they’d take me. They’d take me for tainting their water with mud, corrupting their children’s thoughts with just a look- for somehow the children are the easiest to lure into the darkness; their minds so pure and clean- so simple a task it is to dirty them. The fault is mine and mine alone.

But how sweet it would be to share my fantasies with someone who understands, someone I don’t have to hide anything from, ‘till death do us part. To love and be loved fully and completely. I wonder if there will be a time where people like me won’t have to run- though standing in place seems too simple a life, wouldn’t you find? But for now, I’m filled with a desire for love and peace in a world that will offer me neither.

I suppose this is what I asked for, to be taught to fear myself in hopes that those inclinations disappear from my mind. But the truth is, they never will. The part of me that scares me, and the part that scares the people I now fear, is completely out of my control. And how thrilling it is to bear a secret so deep.

The Seas Still Sail

Humanity as a concept exists to explore; thousands of years were spent explaining the stars and how we got here. The roaring sound of the waves crashing against the side of your ship keeps you awake at night, and you wonder if tonight is the night when the storm finally takes you. You leave the safe place of your ship's sleeping quarters to step outside and investigate, and you're shocked to find that where you are is not a ship sailing the vast seven seas, but only the stream on which a paper boat sails; the storm being the bouncing of the raindrops on pavement. But how much did you let yourself believe the real water wasn't going to get you wet? The tide comes in and goes out, even in the gutters of a sidewalk.

Why so Frightened?

I’m not sure what it is about death that scares me more:
whether it’s that love and grief cannot be one without the other,
that it will always come; that there’s a darkness in the core of warmth.
Or if it’s that I fear I will forget the good once the bad has taken form.
That I’ll not remember the memories I shared with someone who’s left me,
that perhaps object impermanence will apply to loss, and it’ll fade the way sight memory fades from the newly blind.

A Change at Sea

As the waves crash beneath our boat; the only other sound besides the rhythm of our breaths and our beating hearts, we truly start to feel the effects of freedom.

She sits beside me, her hair salty and tangled— full of life and telling the story of our future. I can almost see the fear escape her nose as she exhales; a cloud of negativity, corroded with black and green, leaving her body as I watch her look back and see how far we’ve sailed already. We both smell of that same salt, that we’ve been sprayed with by the lapping of the ocean. I sense it will become a memory I long to hold onto, the first time I’ve felt truly happy. We look at eachother, her eyes meet mine halfway, and we gain a mutual understanding of how far we’ve come, but yet how much we still have to go. How much we have still to discover. Together.

I think of my father, who knows not of where I am but who will not care, and I smile a little knowing I will need never hear the devil in his voice as he roars at me and my companion. The fear she has gained for him is not something I can revoke, but I hope she finds new people from whom she doesn’t have to cower. I truly