Cunning The sea is dark. The sky is darker. The waves are murky. The air is clear. The floor is shaking, this way and that, jerked around like a kite in a storm. I cannot see my feet, and yet I feel them trembling, planted on the moving deck. Waves crash against the scarlet hull– at least I know it was scarlet in daytime. At night, where we stand, the world is a void, a void of empty darkness. Clouds of vengeance shield slips of moonlight. Not a speck for our sorry boat. Our boat lurches onwards, left to right, slicing through the spray of seamist. And then the waves slice in through us. Ropes are abandoned. We pray for mercy. I think of my mother, in a land far away, humming a tune to a fatherless child; trapped in the fury, the vicissitudes of winter, longing for light at the end of the tunnel. I crane my neck to see the horizon, search for light, for land, for hope. My eyes are searching, wishing, wandering. Darkness is all that lies ahead. A wave, a crashing, ruthless monster, hits us from behind. You are cunning to creep, to slither like a snake, to take us down from down below. You are cunning, I think, as our boat is turned sideways, as my feet slide on the deck, as my arms flail for the cold metal railing. You are cunning, cunning, so cunning, too cunning, possessed by the salt that took my father. You are cunning to discard my empty soul, to drop me down in the water below. But I am cunning too. I lunge for a glimmering speck, a piece of wood where I can lie, dripping, shivering violently, beneath the inky sky. Watching dark clouds, the wrath of the heavens, dance above my weary soul– straining for my mother’s song, and yet all I hear is my own straining breath. In and out, clinging to the splintery darkness; up and down, up and down, forever waiting for light to come.