poem

Girlhood Titanic

by Lara Chamoun

The ship broke, that’s all, not even thunderous, not even deeply, no storm, no sky screaming apart, no hemorrhage in the sun washed blue, it just split, like something inside you going quiet all at once, like forgetting to blink and growing membranes over your eyes, slick and tender, the inside of a bell, a signal, like a breath you held too long and forgot how to let go becoming small and obedient in your gut, like bone, soft from its heart, tired of carrying you.

No crashing, no omen, no wrath, just cold, then colder, then silence that’s not empty but blunt, swollen, man-made, a silence that knows it's being watched and performs itself like a rite of passage, like the deluge and your extinguishing pressing softness, like injury against soliloquy, like fingers in your mouth, not fond, not cruel, just palpable, silence that wants to be felt. You’re still hollow, you’re still open, you’ve always been waiting to be changed.

No one screamed, not really, just mouths open, eyes wide, not even tears, just this reflex, this old reaching, as if we could claw the air back in, as if that would keep the water out, as if knuckles could undo rupture, unshatter metal. We reached for each other, not for comfort, not even for God, but to prove we still had hands, still had skin that meant something, that we could still be touched, still be claimed, that we were not yet part of the water, though it had already begun the baptism.

You think water panics, it never does, it just takes like it’s keeping a promise, it waits, it memorizes you, not your name but your pressure points, learns your weight, how it changes when you’re hysterical, your waves, your internal weather, your depressions, the paralysis that fills it, the colour of what you can’t speak, it wraps its veins slowly, it kisses you in your innermost rift, it’s sleep, it’s hunger, it’s fire emptied.

You remember someone saying mother, not his mother, just mother, like the sea could be her, like the swell was her pregnancy, blue-lunged and knowing, like she’d hear it in the blood, like she could pull us back by the scruff of our youth, golden, still shining from birthwater, cut through the dark like she’s done it before, like she was made for it, made of it, her hands salt-calloused, her womb the tide.

You thought of Paris, you don’t know why, the girl with the chipped nail polish and indigo coat and a laugh like the most glassy street lamp flickering against the city’s dark, you kissed her shoulder once, it was too hot and you were afraid of everything, of how fast her skin cooled under my mouth, you meant to write about it, you meant to hold that moment in place, you meant to mean something, like a bruise you’d earned.

You thought you’d come back up, that you’d break the surface like a mirror, but the light stayed high and the sea said no, not you, not now, it pressed in, not hard, not fast, just close, so close it became the only thing, drowning isn’t what you think, no thrashing, no violence, just the body doing what it knows, breathe, breathe, breathe, and then not breathing, still trying, still soft, still animal.

In Paris, you met an albatross, awkward and immense, wings to wide for walking, the sky sheltered between them as if its depths settled where black feathers became ghostlight pale.

You saw yourself there, clumsy, tethered, desperate for wildness that your own body wouldn’t let you claim. It stood still, grounded but restless, waiting for a wind that might never come, and you wanted wings to escape the deep cold pressing in from all sides, the peaceful pull of something vast and merciless.

You wanted wings.

Not to flee, to soar, to feel the air rip past your skin, to cut through your suffocating with a scream. You sank inevitably, and learned to be weightless that way, becoming small and still, watching the winds above for the albatross to take flight, but you were already looking down into yourself.

You tried to pray, but it came out wrong, it came out as her name, no name, that ache behind the teeth, just the shape of wanting, You remembered heat, hands on your ribs, someone saying your name like it was a secret, someone meaning it.

The sea doesn’t answer, doesn’t choose, it indulges, like permanence, like a mother’s hand flat against your chest, not for comfort, just to say, hush, hush, don’t fight what you are. It didn’t look at you, it didn’t look away, it just stayed, like it always had, like it always would, and you stayed too.

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Lara Chamoun is a student from Toronto, Canada. She is the author of the poetry collection Bleeding Ghosts (Cathexis Northwest Press) and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Denver Quarterly, LIT Magazine, PRISM International, Queen's Quarterly, and elsewhere. She was a 2024 Adroit Summer Mentorship mentee in fiction and reads for Eucalyptus Lit.