2.24b

Shipwreck

I'm trying to dig the feeling from the pit of my stomach. It sank there months ago in the middle of a late-autumn storm. Waves of sadness, twenty feet high, washed over me and threw my self-satisfaction overboard.

The color of the sun can't make its way through the rain-drenched clouds. Everything on the lake is washed-out. I'm throwing lines around thwarts, trying to get the mast to stay upright. I've long since taken my sail down; I haven't known the pleasure of a breeze for what seems like lifetimes. The rope I wrap around the thwart and then I then I don't know what to do. I cower in the bottom of the boat, soaked and soaking. I could bail, but the bucket leaks. I could signal for help, but no one is near. I could jump overboard, but I'm not fatalistic. I'm just in the worst position imaginable.

I can still remember it. It still feels like present tense. I'm lifting up on the cable--I hired a recovery boat from someone I knew. The motor churns and the pulleys scream. I know where my feeling sank, and I need it back. I know that its worth is only sentimental; the wood and canvas of the feeling is relatively inexpensive, but I need it back. A happy gull screams at me from high above. The water is calm. The cable is taught. A scrap of wind pulls my hair back from my face. My feeling is rising. I have hope again.

Then, disaster.

The cable rips off the pulley. The wheel swings sideways. The rope drops to the deck and snaps tight.

The boat lists.

I have to make a decision. I want my feeling back. I want to dig it out and pull it up and have it. I want to have it. But my friend's boat--it lists. The engine still burns, pulling the cable across the deck and pulling the gunnel to meet the lake. I pull out a sharpness, a blade, a knife. Do I let the rescue continue? Do I hope that the boat will right itself? Or do I cut the line, leave my feeling, and save my friend's boat?

I cut.

I slash.
I saw.

The line whips away from the cut and lashes me across the face. I crawl to the engine and shut it off. The boat sits, calm in the water, and I can feel my feeling drifting back down to the lakebed. My eyes are stinging from the lash I received. Everything I have is lost, but at least I saved my friend's boat. At least. At least.

I'm not crying;

     I'm breaking. Thanks for asking.