family – wordandcolour

“Sammie, Cindy, Hen” – Natalie Morrill

You said you couldn’t remember the time we almost ran away. Do you really not remember? It’s funny how I assume you must. You were about six, I think, and Hen made me think we were going to do it. It was while we still all shared a room. Do you remember that?

There wasn’t much to run away from, you’ll probably say. Our bedroom was pink and musty. We had a dresser drawer full of magazine clippings, mainly boy band members, and also some prayer cards with the pope’s face that one of us had probably stuffed in there while cleaning up. Hen had the wide bunk under mine, and I could slip down the ladder at night and lie spooned with her there if I didn’t wake her. Sometimes I’d find you with her already. I wonder if you remember that.

Your hair was very red back then. I was jealous of you for it and mean about it. You and I were the young ones, to my chagrin, but we pretended a lot together. Whenever Hen pretended with us, the game would become wonderful.

“We are in Arabia,” she told us once, as we made our slow ascent of the staircase, which was a sand dune that day. “We’re riding dromedaries.” I thought it was an animal she’d made up. I imagined something like a Chinese dragon. When my dromedary started to fly Hen said only, “He hasn’t had a drink in days, remember. Don’t let him wear himself out.” So I had him land and plod obediently behind her. It took us three hours to get up that dune.

You were sometimes a little behind in the games. I know we’d take that out on you. You wanted to know the rules but the rules kept changing. Sometimes I changed them on purpose to make you feel small. Sometimes Hen got sick of our smallness and left the game without warning, leaving me bewildered. I’d be cruel to you then, I think.

But I thought I always knew when she was pretending.

• • •

What happened was one afternoon I found her curled in her bed with her face to the wall. I lay down beside her and pressed a hand into her back. She sniffed hard and I understood she’d been crying. It all seemed very real.

She rolled toward me. Her face was very close, her eyes red. She said, “Cindy, we have to run away.”

Now that I write it I realize it was not so simple as I figured afterwards. Then I felt only that I’d failed to understand what was real and what was pretend. It made me feel stupid and little. But I wonder about it now. I think perhaps Mum and Dad had started fighting. Or there may have been something else. I always wondered if there were something else. Maybe you know.

She said, “We have to run away,” and my mouth went dry. I stared at her. I wasn’t altogether opposed to running away, as long as we were running toward something nice, but the seriousness of her face frightened me.

“Where?” I asked.

I don’t think it was the question she’d expected. It’s not the question I’d ask if I could go back and be eight years old again. She swallowed and looked at the ceiling for a minute.

“To the woods,” she said.

This made me feel a bit better. I loved the woods. I liked to imagine living there. The woods were just a block away and we’d built some forts in the bushes already.

I said, “Okay. Tonight?”

“Yes.” She took my hands. “Tonight. Don’t tell anyone.”

“Not even Sammie?”

“We’ll tell Sam. We’ll bring her too. But you can’t tell Mum and Dad. None of your friends.”

I wouldn’t, I promised her. But I was a bit disappointed about bringing you. For a moment it seemed like a wonderful adventure I was going to have with Hen, just the two of us, which was something that never happened anymore.

When I found you I took you to a corner of the den, made you stand right against the wall, and I told you, with hard low words, “We are going to run away.”

I saw you grow frightened, more frightened than I’d been. I thought you might cry and I put a finger under your nose. “Don’t you dare cry, or Hen and I will never speak to you again.”

Everything in me was grim. Everything in you seemed terrified.

“But why?” you asked me.

It was the question I should have asked Hen and I didn’t know the answer. So I said, without thinking, “We’re in serious danger, and everything depends on you being quiet.”

And you were quiet. You watched me all through dinner and hardly ate a thing. Hen stayed up in our room, I think. I don’t remember Mum or Dad saying much at all, but I was stuck in my own head that evening, wondering what would happen next.

Right after we turned the lights off in our bedroom that night, Hen got up and said, “I’ll be in the bathroom.” I watched her disappear, a silhouette cut out of the brightness through our door until it swung shut behind her. I couldn’t remember if this was part of the plan.

“Cindy.” Your voice out of the dark. “What’s happening?”

“Shh.” My heart was thrumming. For reasons I couldn’t guess, I felt sick. I remember thinking faster than I’d ever thought. “We’re supposed to meet her outside.”

“How?”

I said, “We’ll climb out the window.”

It was something I’d often thought about but never done. The trellis reached almost to our window, after all. I got down from my bunk and wrested the sash open.

“You go first, Sammie,” I whispered.

I can’t believe you don’t remember that. I have never felt more outside myself than in that moment. I was pretending as hard as I could, as if believing it fiercely enough could make it real.

Though you were across the room, I could feel somehow your small body tense and shaking in the dark.

“Me?”

“You’re littler. You won’t break the trellis.”

Maybe you forget because it didn’t feel real. For me it didn’t feel real. I was watching a girl tell her sister to climb out the window and wondering what each of them would do.

You came up to the sill beside me. I couldn’t hear you breathing. I put my hand on your back and whispered, “Go, Sammie.”

And you went. Little body out the window like the wind had caught you up in its hands.

I was frozen for a moment, and then I leaned out. “Sam!”

“I’m here,” you said. You were only a voice. “I fell part of the way but I’m okay.”

Which meant, unfathomably, that I had to climb out too. If only that unreal feeling had lasted. Everything was much too real in that moment. But what could I do?

I remember the windowsill rubbing rough against my thighs as I swung my legs out, shaking. The paint must have been flaking off on the outside. I slid down on my stomach, arms stiff as death as I gripped the inside edge of the sill. One of my feet found the trellis and I thought, for a second, that this would be fine. I leaned my weight on it. There came the snap like stepping on a twig in the woods and then I was tumbling through the air.

I landed in a bush. Maybe you’d landed in it first. I remember the moment I realized I was not dead: it was the moment before I realized my ankle was broken.

My screaming brought Mum and Dad out, of course, and Hen. The rest of the night was cars and hospital waiting rooms, delirious cups of hot chocolate sometime around bed at four a.m. In the midst of this, naturally, our parents asked me what had happened, but before I could say anything, Hen told them she’d put us up to it. It was a game, she said. We were pretending to run away. Only she hadn’t realized how seriously her little sisters would take it—she felt sorry, she said, for seeming dishonest. She would be more truthful about our games in the future.

I remember the look on her face when she said it: she was like a medieval penitent, stretched thin by the pull of remorse. So what could I do but believe? I was an idiot; I was a child; I didn’t understand a thing. I fell asleep crying that morning, but only a fraction of it was from the pain in my ankle.

It was very soon after that that Hen convinced Mum and Dad she needed her own room. I don’t think she played with us much afterwards. I’d load you, as my donkey, with a laundry-basket saddle when we climbed the staircase, which was the Grand Canyon, but Hen would be locked in her own little room, doing I don’t know what. And of course not many years after that she left us, suddenly, for good.

• • •

It was kind of you to ask me about this. I’m glad I’ve thought it through and written it down. But I reach this point—and I realize I don’t know if you meant it when you said you couldn’t remember. Write me about it sometime, you said, as we left Mum at the hospital. But you had that look, too—I ought to have learned to notice that look. Did you want me to remember it? Did you want me to tell you my version of things?

I really don’t know anything, Sam. If I could slip down some ladder and cuddle into a warm musty space beside you, and beside our Hen, I suspect there would be less lie in that than anything I could write to you. And I don’t mean that we lie to each other, really. It’s just that the truth is a very hard thing to tell.

these words by Natalie Morrill were inspired by the work of Evelyn Bencicova

“Cut From the Same Cloth” – Tristen Sutherland

Mrs. Anita Thomas loved her rocking chair. For hours, she would sit, rocking back and forth, humming to herself, blanket tucked neatly in her lap. Sometimes, I would watch her from across the street, as I toted my schoolbag home. She was a creature of habit. Always in the same spot. Staring at her blanket, like a statue.

On a day when I was feeling particularly brave, I crossed the street to get a closer look at Mrs. Anita Thomas. I peeked at her porch from behind one of her neighbour’s bushes, when she spotted me and called me over. Sheepishly, I approached, eyes downcast. Her face was hard and her brows were furrowed. I prepared myself for the reprimanding, keeping eyes on my scuffed shoes. Then, there was laughter? I looked up at Mrs. Anita Thomas, who was wiping a tear from her eye. Her face was soft, her smile seemed to disappear into a sea of welcoming wrinkles. I smiled weakly, not understanding the joke.

“I’m sorry,” she said, composing herself a little. “I couldn’t help myself. What’s your name, little girl?”

I told her and the next thing I knew, I was sitting alongside her nibbling an almond biscuit. It was strange to see her up close. She wasn’t a statue at all. As she spoke, she gesticulated, her chair rocking more severely when she was impassioned. I watched her as she spoke, transfixed by her whole demeanour. That was the day I became a part of Mrs. Anita Thomas’s routine.

Every day after school the scene would be the same: Me, sitting next to Mrs. Anita Thomas, her in her rocker and me on my chair, her weaving together a tale. Every story began the same way. I would take a bite of my biscuit, and Mrs. Anita Thomas would point a dark root-like finger towards the green and red blanket on her lap. Each day, her knobby finger would point to a new section of the blanket. Once settled, she would begin: “This is a story of our ancestors, and it begins with this piece of cloth…” Every time she said this, I would marvel at her use of our. It implied that we were one in the same, cut from the same cloth somehow. That was always my favourite part.

I remember asking my mum where we were from and her responding, without looking up from the newspaper, “Halifax, sweetie.” But that was not the answer I was searching for.

Mrs. Anita Thomas’s stories were always about our ancestors. She spoke of complicated plots involving star-crossed lovers, with mahogany skin and dueling families and traditions that I never heard of. When I pressed my mother further about our family’s origins, citing Mrs. Anita Thomas’s stories, she would assure me that those were just stories. As far as my mother knew, our family was from Halifax. We were Canadian through and through.

Despite my mum’s insistence on our Canadianness, I believed in Mrs. Anita Thomas’s blanket. I imagined our ancestors weaving together the cloth, infusing it with their stories. Knowing the stories of our ancestors made me feel strong. There was an our.

Mrs. Anita Thomas passed and left her blanket to me. I was 12 at the time, still clinging to my childhood, still clinging to her stories. I was shattered when I discovered the “Made in China” tag on the underside of the blanket. In that moment, I accepted my Canadianness like a bitter pill. There was no our.

When my daughter walks in, to see me in tears holding an old red-and-green blanket, I don’t know what to say. She stands in the doorway, peering at me, eyebrows implying an air of concern. After a moment, I spread the blanket on the floor and invite my young daughter to sit on my lap. I take a breath and point to a section of the blanket. I begin: “This is a story of our ancestors, and it begins with this piece of cloth…”

these words by Tristen Sutherland were inspired by the work of Nick Liefhebber

“Grandma’s Hands” – Josh Elyea

As I sit on the bus, I look to the lady next to me. She has severe hands, crooked fingers with hard knuckles. My grandmother had hands like that. I used to stare at them, gnarled and hooked like talons, as she tried to teach me to play the piano. She used to laugh when I’d play only the black keys, and she’d sing softly, almost at a whisper, when we’d play her favorite hymns. She had a terrific voice, my Gram—one of the all-time greats. It was a voice of contradictions, hers—polite but gravelly, blue collar but lyrical—and she had a funny way of speaking, an off-kilter cadence to her voice that was somewhere between southern drawl and Irish poet. She hated her voice, but it made for the best stories and the best Sunday mornings.

My grandma’s hands used to drop the needle on her old Crosley, and somewhere in the fog of my memory I remain a child, wide-eyed and dumbfounded, awed that such a primitive system of bumps and ridges could summon forth the soul, the smoulder of Sam Cooke with apparent ease. The needle of the record player was hypnotising, intoxicating, but there seemed to be no immediate correlation between the movements of the needle and the sound of the soul music cascading through the room. I couldn’t understand, and when I asked my grandmother why this was, she told me that you couldn’t see soul, you just had to listen for it.

these words by Josh Elyea were inspired by the work of Shanna Strauss

On Silence and Domestic Abuse

I was fifteen years old when she told me for the first time. I had asked her how she was doing. She looked squarely into my eyes, which look exactly like hers, and said words that she would go on to repeat many times: “I am waiting to die.” She said it in her usual way: tired yet hard and brazen. No tremble, no sadness. Defiant eyes. She didn’t say it to complain, or to illicit pity. (Though that’s what the others sometimes said about her.)

Most grandchildren don’t expect to hear that kind of language. Not me. I was fairly certain I knew why she said it. I knew about the angry welts on her body from his hands. I had been there once as a small child when he grabbed her by the hair and smashed her head toward the corner of the wooden cabinet. It was the last thing I saw before she pushed me out of the room and closed the door with her falling weight. I knew that she had been the sole breadwinner her whole life, working manual labour to put food on the table, to pay for her children’s school fees, to unwillingly fund his addictions to gambling and prostitutes, cigarettes and alcohol. (This later came to include funding his child support payments for those illegitimate children that we didn’t talk about but whose mouths were also fed by her hard work.) These, after all, had been the constant realities of my life as I flitted in and out of their home, not quite innocent enough to escape their burning silences but thankfully spared from the fits of rage and violence that I knew existed underneath. But I still had to ask her “Why?” to hear it from her own lips.

“Because my health is clearly worse than his, and at this rate, the only way I will find peace away from him is when I’m gone.” She was in her mid-seventies at this point.

“But if what you want is to be free of him, isn’t there anything we can do other than wait? Can’t you get a divorce? Can’t you move out and stop living with him?” I asked. Visions of my grandmother as I had never known her, happy and carefree, danced before me.

“There’s no point.” She seemed instantly to regret saying anything, shooing away my questions and telling me that I wouldn’t – couldn’t – understand. There was too much I didn’t know. In my teenage mind, I felt patronized. What was she keeping from me?

I asked my mother. I asked my aunts. I got mixed responses. From “We’ve tried. We’ve offered multiple times to move her out, but she won’t leave. And he won’t leave either,” to the more frightening, “She’s past the point of moving on. There’s nothing you can do for her now.” I felt impotent. I thought about those defiant eyes; that hard stare that she gave him when she wordlessly served him his breakfast, lunch and supper which she cooked from scratch, no matter how bedridden the doctors told her she was. Diabetes, hypertension, a heart attack: nothing could stop her from keeping him fed. It seemed impossible to understand – if she wanted it to end, why didn’t she just walk away?

Ten years have passed since she first declared to me that she was waiting to die. Her body is older, closer to the relief she seeks and further from us who love her. On a warm January morning this year, she told me yet again, “My bones are very tired. I am waiting to die.” And for once, finally, she was ready to say why.

“My father had wanted to choose a husband for me, as was common in those days, but I was headstrong and insisted on marrying your grandfather out of love. We had known each other since we were children; we grew up as neighbours. My father relented and we got married. The first couple years were okay. We had your aunt and your mother. But then, things started changing even before your uncle and aunt were born. You know already: gambling , alcohol, prostitutes. I had to start working, and then I had to work more and more. We were getting poorer and poorer…at some points we were barely eating, and we had to pull your aunt out of school. My father tried to loan us money but your grandfather always spent it all. Since I’m a woman, my father couldn’t trust me with money…he always gave the loans directly to your grandfather. But it was always gone before it ever reached me or the children, and I could never pay my father back, no matter how hard I worked. I could barely put food on the table with my salary. He eventually had to cut us off because he realized that any cent he loaned us would be a cent wasted. He passed away before I could ever pay him back, before I could ever apologize for costing him so much and for having wronged him so greatly with my choice of husband.”

Before I could say a word, she continued.

“My mother was much more sympathetic. She moved in with us to care for your mother and her siblings so that I could work more hours. Sometimes, I would have to go away for days at a time. She always begged me not to go for too long.”

Tears were falling down her cheeks.

“One day, your great-grandmother got sick while I was gone. She must have been in her late 70s and she was such a tiny, frail person. Your aunt took her to the doctor’s, where they diagnosed her…”

The tears came stronger; her words almost a whisper.

“With an infection that came from untreated chlamydia. Your aunt had to translate the doctor’s questions as to how on earth a woman at that age could have contracted…”

She paused. The realization dawned on me.

“…a venereal disease. And that’s how I found out that he had been raping my own mother for nearly twenty years.”

She took a pause. We blew our noses, and wiped our tears.

“She said she never told me because he threatened her by saying that if she ever told, he would hurt me and the girls. Of course, by that point he already had… your aunt and uncle were forced onto me by assault. I didn’t want to have any more children after your mother was born. And my little girls… I could only protect them when I was home, but when I wasn’t around…Your mother was seven years old when she came crying to me when I got back from work. She said she had been bent over, feeding the chickens when he came over and…and…”

She couldn’t finish.

“He used to break broomstick handles over your mother’s head for her insolence. But she always fought back. Not like your great-grandmother. She was so tiny, so meek…I can never forgive myself for any of it.”

My ears felt like they were ringing, my chest felt heavy, my eyes were stinging. Three generations of women before me had been abused by the man who was sitting on the other side of the house…

Except that he wasn’t. He wasn’t on the other side of the house. Somehow, in all our sadness, we had missed the sound of his footsteps approaching. He was suddenly standing there, in the doorway looking silently at our puffy eyes and runny noses.

As our eyes met, he said, “Did you read the news about the EU?”

I was incapable of saying a word. I wanted to get up and punch him in the face. I wanted to lash out and scream at him. I wanted to push him down the stairs, out of the house and away from all the people that I loved.

I looked at my grandmother. The defiant eyes were gone. She did not look scared of him: she looked scared of me. She gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head as if to say “Don’t.” I thought I understood. He had already ruined everything that was sacred to her…her mother, her father, her children, herself. If I said anything, he would be on her as soon as I left. I kept my mouth shut. Once he had crossed to the living room, she whispered that I must promise to never never breathe a word to him about it. I promised, frightened of what he would do to her.

I spent much of the next twenty four hours horrified. I tried to convince her that we needed to make a plan to get her away from him. She was infuriated by my many suggestions.

“You promised me you wouldn’t make a fuss!”

When it was clear that I wasn’t intending on giving up, she took me aside and looked me in the eye.

“I’m not afraid of your grandfather. He can do nothing worse than what he has already done. So stop trying to ruin everything. I was foolish to think that you would ever understand.”

I was so confused. I had thought that she didn’t want me to say anything precisely because she was afraid of the violence he might cause.

It has taken me a long time for me to understand why she hasn’t left. I see now that my grandmother has had very few choices in her life…but her choice to stay or leave is hers to make, not mine to make for her. So much has already been taken from her. Who am I to take away her one last choice to solemnly await death? She has decided for herself that while on earth she cannot escape the madness and guilt of his doing. No physical distance from him can set her free from her anger towards herself. She seems to choose to be within hating distance of him so as to concentrate all her silent fury outward, instead of in. As much as she hates him, I feel she hates herself more for not having been able to stop him. She comes from a generation that doesn’t believe in counselling, so I have no way to help her shed her guilt. Instead, she waits for the end.

these words by Jo-Ann Zhou were inspired by the colour of Raphael Varona

On Family: “No applause for a hero”

“Teach your children well, their father’s hell did slowly go by,

And feed them on your dreams, the one they fix, the one you’ll know by.

Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,

So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.”

“Teach Your Children,” by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young

‘What a fucking spread!’

‘Who woulda thought?’ Frances agreed.

‘Bagels, lox, whitefish, coffee, salami, bologna, provolone, macaroni—”

‘Chicken salad!’

Several parents crowded the cream cheese station at the back of the auditorium. Henry admired his wife’s breasts as she crouched to pick up a tomato. 37.5% of the couples there were gay. Mr. Hall, the middle school coordinator, wore a pesto green suit. The hunchback look worked for him. Everyone there paid $2.75 to ride the train to P.S. 463 if they didn’t hop the turnstile. But by the looks of it, there were a few who might’ve jumped.

‘Hey!’ Caleb, 4’6”, rushed over and hugged his parents. ‘Thanks for coming!’

‘Our pleasure!’

The chatter inconspicuously petered out when Mr. Hall tapped the microphone. ‘Family, friends, distinguished guests: thank you for coming to P.S. 463’s annual Role Model Day! In humanities this year, the students considered adolescence. In lieu of their studies, they reflected on their role model’s unique qualities that they hope to emulate as rising middle schoolers. Today, you will hear some of their thoughts.’

A little girl climbed on stage. Mr. Hall adjusted the microphone stand appropriately. She looked down at her notecard: ‘Hi.’

After a pause, the audience realized it was being invited to exchange greetings. ‘Hi!’

She continued, ‘My name is June Langley and my role model is Hermione. Most of all, Hermione is a genius. One day, I want to be a genius. Hermione also helps Harry beat Voldemort again and again and again. I want to defeat evil, too!’ June bowed, and the crowd cheered. An ‘I love you sweetie!’ and, ‘You are a genius, babe!’ were made out from the clamor. Surely it was June’s parents.

Another girl stepped on stage. Her name was Anne Carney. She had no index card. Her role model was Serena Williams. Serena, she informed the crowd, always wins and hates to lose. Anne does, too, she tells the full house. When she grows up she wants to be successful, like Serena! The sound level meter for June’s speech reached a higher altitude.

Now Caleb hurried up the steps. He took a piece of crumbled paper out of his pocket and unwrinkled it. This had BOY written all over it. Not once did he lift his eyes. ‘My name is Caleb Monroe and my role models are my mom and dad. Mom wakes up everyday at 5:00 and packs my lunch. She fills the fridge with my favorite snacks. Dad fought in court for my autistic brother Fred to go to a good school. He drops me at basketball practice after school and always wants to play. They are exhausted from work and then come home and cook. If there is no food, they go shopping. And tomorrow they’ll do it all again. They do not get paid for this job, and never ask for anyone to clap for their demanding work. Being a parent is so heroic. There’s no applause for a hero.’

The audience has no idea how to respond.

word by Jacob Goldberg

“After I learned that “La Practique Du Calcul” roughly translated to “basic calculus,” I wanted to write about how difficult calculus was for me but easy for others. With that in mind, I hoped to sketch a story about something that I feel is at once important, simple, and uniquely hard: showing appreciation and love for those that really matter to us.”

colour by Julien Coquentin

his wolf

Dad got anxious. Mama didn’t: she just swished around beautifully like colour in a paintbrush jar, singing Moon Shadow and tying scarves around her forehead so I never really knew how big it was. But Dad was anxious. His thin body shook inside his dressing gown, taking the tea Mama would bring him in his match-stick rouge hands, thanking her with his quiet voice, his normal voice; the voice I never heard raised.

Dad was so thin because he barely ate, and anything he did eat he told me he tapped away. He did tap it away—I watched him each night after school as he sat as close to the fire as he could in winter, and as close as he could to the fan in summer, his foot tapping at the floor and his hands tapping at his crooked, dancing leg.

Dad wouldn’t eat pigs—he said he was too fond of their pink hairy backs and the way they really had those curled tails you saw in picture books. He wouldn’t eat apples for obvious reasons; ‘they’re so happy up there on the tree and then we cruelly pick them down.’

When Mama would make me eat my carrots and corn, Dad would sit there smiling faintly, his plate free of anything but bread and thick shiny butter. He didn’t have to eat carrots and corn. I didn’t shake like him.

One morning I got up early to see whether Mama had left the butter on the kitchen table. I liked to spoon curves of it into my mouth before we had breakfast, so the grease would sit warm and safe in my mouth. I remember it was winter-time because I dragged my mittens onto my feet after searching to no avail for my slippers and they made it hard to get down the stairs without slipping. As I passed their room I heard Mama’s voice low and hurried and edged my head around the door. Dad was lying on the bed, flat and old, and Mama was standing above him. She was crying—I could see the tears dropping onto the doona and the air felt thick with worry and damp. She looked over at me.

‘Daddy’s sick darling. He’s very sick,’ she said, gulping, clutching at the doona’s soggy edge.

I asked her what was wrong with him, standing as tall as I was just there in my mittens.

‘His wolf has come again darling,’ she said. ‘His wolf has come to scare him.’

I ran to my bedroom, tripping on stairs in knotted wool mittens, grasping at the wooden edges to pull myself up and up.

I sat tight on my bed, wondering when my wolf would come.

word by Laura Mcphee-Browne

colour by Monsta

trying

When I was younger, my father was always telling me to try. Part of me wonders if I was born a quitter, for him having to say it as much as he did. And I regret that it was the last word he ever spoke to me, reaching through the helplessly jarred door, pleading me to find a way to the upper deck, to a lifeboat; not to give up. To get into the water and swim, survive, try. I let go of his hand when the sea was at his chin, and, my eyes bleary with tears, I climbed, up to the black sea, which was churning and roiling and flashing with blinding strobes of light. The lifeboat was tangled in rigging that had snapped and couldn’t be lowered. So people were leaping into the ocean. I had put on my swimsuit at the first alarm, so only had to remove an oversized shirt before grabbing the cold rails and hoisting myself over the side. The jolting shock of the water. The dark silence beneath the surface. Clawing through the swirling brine to punch above. Gasping at the air being sifted through the sheets of rain. And already, just seeing the black hills of water around me, as I climbed and descended the impossible swells simply by treading water, I wanted to give up. Yet I swore to him I wouldn’t. So I tried, to swim, crawling forward, taking in salty water twice, coughing, crying. I found the best I could do was to keep my head above, swimming on my back, from nowhere to nowhere. Just keeping afloat. My muscles red with panic. Windmilling my arms, kicking as if trying to shake off some wild animal clutching at my feet. Swimming for my life, for my father, who was still sinking to the bottom of his saltwater grave. Trying. For both of us. Trying.

word by Mark Lavorato

colour by Jeannie Phan

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word by Laura Mcphee-Browne

colour by Monsta

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