BUOYANCY

Spring 2018

I float in the water unmoored until skin puckers and goosebumps dot flesh. I belong to no one and nowhere. That is the most freeing and terrifying thing about me. I was a secret floating in my mother’s womb uncelebrated and unannounced. At thirty weeks gestation, I was born not to a warm bosom but an incubator of needles, tubes and loneliness. Infection touched more of my body than the hands of my own mother. Then after weeks spent unattached under florescent lights, a foster mother cradled me while my mother wrestled with the reality of raising a second child alone while her dead-beat husband binge drank. My mom keeping me brought forth a life where no man, no father, and no grandfather claimed me as his beloved. I am either the freest vessel on the sea or the most ready to capsize.