Terese Svoboda - Pirate Talk or Mermalade

She is hoisting my child up. It looks like me. It waves.

I will cut this she the way I cut when you and I were drowned and going down. I will kill this monster now, the way I did to save you from the creatures the time we swum.

There she is, as real and clear as the water itself.

You’re as wrong as Ma.

She speaks. She says, Aye, and gestures.

This is a cursed game and I won’t play it. The sound of this is enough to know you’re dead and done. Stop talking to your feet. The ice is too thin here, yes, with animals under it who would tear us to bits in an instant.

Aye? Or mine eye?

I am turning and walking the sevens. First the femaleness, now the raving.

No, no — hold up. Take this eye of mine, the whale’s eye. Look through it.

At last, you’re giving it.

Fit it in.

It has the look of dice.

Take your hand away from your face and feel your way—

The ice is shaking.

To the shore — you must see her.

No, no — the ice is thinner here.

The lights! See the lights behind her!

I don’t see any lights.

I be a woman with two eyes and I see them: a red, the purples of the cloth, a tincture of orange, the color of light.

Take your eye back, I don’t want it if that is what you want me to see.

Come, she says come, doesn’t she? With all that loud breathing? Let me out of this rope.

I can’t swim you know, I can’t swim at all.

Just let me—

Mercy! We’re cut.

It’s the gills of a fish below. A whale. Look close! Stop your leaning!

You’ve run me through. With my own cutlass, my very own brother.

I did not plunge it, you ran into it.

The blood runs fast, it likes the cold. Not death, not death.

You would not let me go to her.

Aye.

The true brother.

Aye.

You saw her then, didn’t you? With the eye? You must tell me.

I saw—

You must tell me.

Mark the spot—

What did you see?

The sea, I saw the sea. And—

And?

You, a she, the sea—

Did you see her?

I saw — sister — I saw—

I will mark the spot, I will. What did you see?

Aye, the sea.

Just one more breath! Oh, brother!

Ma!

Here be his X, one false leg, one true, spread. But where be my sister? My true sister.

Thanks very much to Professor Kris Lane, Sondra Olsen, Gay Walley, and Steve Bull who is the best pirate of all.