How the waves break us
The psychogeography of a Cornish coastline
Autumn waves caress me, a soothing balm of salty air and nostalgic gulls.
I’m almost with the wind, my body fiercely loves the sea.
The screeching owls remind me of home. Salt licks their nests.
That great mirror cracks open my mind towards Tarkovsky’s Otherworld.
She stuns us towards togetherness, swimming amongst peach and granny smith anemones.
Dead mussels congregate in our pools.
I want to reject the ornamental—to bridge the gap between human and animal.
Between high and low tide my nerves are alive with curiosity.
The stewards turned around a Victorian gravestone (where the dead dog was named the N-word by its human owners) for fear of striking offence to the racialised people who might show up.
And still, the grave stands, melanated trauma etched into eternity.
Don’t you know that unbelonging was the soil they fed for generation after generation, and fails to be turned, to be hospiced? To be given the right death.
To whom does this land belong?
My mother-longing for this coastline is persistent.
Until then, my amygdala won’t rest.
My grief fails to grasp logic or reason.
The sun and moon collude, praying for us to understand this, intimately:
We belong to the waves in their brokenness.
Their daily revelations go unseen,
A wet and passionate embrace,
Rocking us to sleep.