Your Body is Not Your Body by Tenbrous Press

Author:Tenbrous Press [Press, Tenbrous]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-05-05T00:48:43+00:00

SEAFLOWERS

Ori Jay

NEVER TRUST A drowned woman. (That’s what they say.)

She’s known too much heartache, too much pain—down at the bottom of the ocean where it settles heavy as iron anchors; where the barnacles and rust take root, and even the ebb and flow of the water simply can’t dislodge the unsightly stain of so much history.

And if you meet a drowned woman, never ask her name.

Once you know her name, her words have meaning—and when she speaks, the spells she weaves will change you; the syllables like snares pulled taut, the lines of her drawn into nets designed to hold you fast as she spins her sodden stories.

And if she offers to show you her garden, refuse.

Never ask to see where her seaflowers bloom.

Because once you see them blossom—pulsing in the water like beating hearts, red leaves and vines whispering with the beat of the waves like angry scars, like living veins—no rose will ever look the same.

Never ask a drowned woman her secrets.

Because the truths she knows are painful—the agony she’s seen as she clawed desperately against the tide, gasping mouthfuls of salt in search of something approaching air

—the anguish in her eyes as she describes the crushing pressure bearing down, the certainty that salvation was long past

—the cold and clammy brush of her fingers against your own, waterlogged and unable to contain their own condition

—well, some truths are simply better left unheard.

Because when you hear them, something in you might stir.

Those secrets, they might slip inside you and you might feel them root there, somewhere behind and slightly underneath your heart.

You might hear them whisper, soft and steady, inside your ears at night.

You might sense them growing, twisting, taking shape along the lattice of your ribcage and the stalk of your spine.

And once her secrets have penetrated deep enough, you might feel something strange and terrible, beautiful and tragic, otherworldly and unseen, begin to bloom inside you.

The pressure will feel like you’re drowning. Even in air your lungs will burn. You will shudder and gasp and curl in on yourself, clawing at the sky and wondering who put this strange woman inside of you and why she is there.

The anguish will keep you awake through countless restless nights, through too many endless days.

You’ll feel her flowers inside of you, begging to be free.

And you’ll wonder, “Am I dying? Or is this a new beginning?”

Never trust a drowned woman. (That’s what they say.)

Because if you start to know her, you might become her. And we all know what happens to women like that, in the end.

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