Port by Toyen (Czechia) 1925
A variation on this short fiction piece was published in The Ekphrastic Review's Nine Lives Marathon prose selections on August 21, 2024. Check out all the incredible writings here.
Ships are anchored nearby in the harbor, their containers waiting to be unloaded and lifted by forklift onto trains headed for faraway places, places with old words that sound like heartbeats—Omaha, Winona, and Chicago. The onshore wind blows hard and cold across the Pacific Ocean. When I get out of the car, I think of wearing my sweater but don’t because feeling cold with my hair whipping around is exhilarating. In the parking lot of Warehouse Number 1, people arrive and sit on a loading dock, admiring each other’s classic cars. After a few minutes, they drag race on Harbor Boulevard in a scene from a classic Hollywood movie. The lonely, distant sound softens and is gone.
Sooner or later, the water’s coming to get you, my older brother used to say. By now I understand he repeated those words to scare me and make me into a stronger person, into a fighter instead of a dreamer. He never wanted me to give up on life, as he certainly did.
I have no snapshot memories like his of working on the docks with friends when he was young and strong and could climb like Atlas the geometric shapes of a port. Instead, I lean over the dockside and wonder what lies beneath the ships anchored in the harbor and deep in the water—sunken, metal vessels, brightly colored fish with misshapen mouths, and green bottle glass once containing sweet soda pop. A vast ocean of bright, drowned things.
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