Sarah Turner
Break–
“…[W]e have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea—whether it is to sail or to watch it—we are going back from whence we came.”
—John F. Kennedy, September 1962
in
Walking through the doorway between the present and the past is like riding a merry-go-round while the sun sets and the day fades. Dizzy, you cannot help but feel as though you have just taken the longest trip to nowhere ever recorded. Maybe it is the synapses misfiring or maybe it is the comfort you found in the familiar smell of an old friend’s house, but like your tongue will always find a missing tooth, you cycle back for what was good and what is gone, the gaping hole where once something solid stood, searching for a part of yourself. Why do we give such a lingering look at what we have lost? What is it about possessing that makes us obsessed? It would feel so good to strip off everything, kick off your shoes and walk naked into a crashing wave, the water washing away all trace of self and substance and only the ocean to hear your tears. Sea creatures know the secret. Fish carry nothing with them.
out
There is beauty in a container. The idea that something can be parsed and parceled is essential to structural happiness, and in examining the superficial you sidle closer to understanding what is left when all that excess is cut away. Some people look for completion in every chiseled stone, wholeness in each offshoot of a rugged tree. But following the contours of the body over ridges and dips can lead us into unfamiliar geography: a furrow in what once was smooth, a hole where a hill once rose. There used to be a firmness in this place. But suddenly there are cracks in the landscape, fissures splitting the foundation. Our outlines keep us together but only as long as our center will let them.
up
I imagine for you ours was a gentle separation, each of us leaving the party with the coat we came with, velcro tape unhooking neatly in one peel. But you are embedded in me like a sliver of glass and no amount of rubbing alcohol will sterilize this wound. I only learned anatomy when you left; I could tell where each vein was and every single nerve. Carpet burn brain freeze sun blister hangover. All I can do is taste your lips on my mouth and wish you would kiss me once more with feeling.
down
What is the term for when a word sounds like the shape it makes in your mouth? It isn’t onomatopoetic but there is something to this. Do you see how when you form the word “in” your lips widen to a smile and the air is drawn into your mouth until your tongue taps your top teeth to stop it? Or how your lips jut forward in the “ow” of “out” until the sound is clipped at the t? “Up” has your bottom lip rising to meet the top, a puff of air sailing skyward like a balloon at the end. With “down” you slide lower in octave, your tongue dropping after the “d.” In, out, up, down. I am going to call this audiogeometry.
in
Someone broke open my house, kicked and crowbarred the door off of its hinges, and took from me the childish notion I had of safety. I still do not know how much of my writing they seized with my laptop, but every time a song that had been mine came on the radio at work, I lived the loss all over again. When the insurance company sent a form to itemize and appraise the things that were stolen, I thought about the last place I had taken pictures: the Grand Canyon, that great chasm in the desert worn down by water, one droplet at a time.
out
It’s nearly impossible to have clarity about your own appearance. You cannot reconcile what is only visible from behind your nose with what is reflected in a mirror any more than you can recognize the sound of your own voice on tape. Your part will always be on the wrong side and the gap in your teeth will seem magnified. One day you will wake up and wonder where you have gone. One day you will look in the mirror and see only your flaws. One day you will not recognize your own reflection and someone else will squint back at you, straining to see the relationship between the imagination and the image.
up
A date once told me he found romantic comedies more depressing than apocalyptic documentaries because they present a false sense of reality. The girl gets the guy only as far as the credits will carry them. What is the formula for love? They say attraction has something to do with odor and pheromones, smell being the sense with the greatest attachment to memory, your nose being the farthest part of yourself you put out in the world. But what does this mean: men have less sensitive nasal receptors than women, and I smell like chlorine.
down
The driest place on Earth is not a familiar desert: Gobi, Sahara, Kalahari. It is a place called Atacama, on the northwestern coast of Chile. It used to be part of the ocean, although there are no fish there now. They are somewhere else. The bones of those that stayed have fossilized, become part of the sand. The oldest mummies were found there, too. I imagine deserts to be a roaring quiet, like the rush that fills my ears underwater, like a cocoon.
in
I found out my car was broken into while I was on vacation. I did not keep anything in it and so I wasn’t worried. It was only when I saw the hole where a window used to be, shook the glass and snow off the blanket in the back seat, and heard the fluttering of the plastic wrap as I drove to the mechanic’s garage that I realized it didn’t matter what had been inside. The outside would always find a way in.
out
How do you make friends in the context of rock bottom? What do you say when “How are you doing?” does not have an easy answer? Tell the truth and feel guilty, or lie and feel like a fraud? Every gesture of goodwill, every kind word is an invitation to coffee for them, a rope thrown over the hanging cliff of your life for you. I want so much to crawl inside the skin of the person I was and be reborn. How do you present yourself when the you you knew is now gone and this new you is a stranger? It is like introducing someone you have never met to someone you used to know. Desperation is an ugly dress to wear, even if you have great legs.
up
Alone on the ocean of a new place, the lighthouse I followed was a guy I dated that I’d had a crush on. The possibility of seeing him got me out of bed and carried me through when it felt like I was grasping at a waterfall. Then he told me he started seeing someone else. He told me it was nothing personal and thanked me for being so patient with him. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t patience. It was paralysis, immobility brought forth when every move meant maneuvering an ever-changing minefield.
down
What do you do when even your words fail you? (mix two teaspoons of salt into a lukewarm glass of water) How do you communicate when all that comes out is empty air? (gargle and swish until you feel cleansed) Can you find peace in the space between what you want to say and what you are able? (certainly, repeat as necessary)
in
There is immediacy in a shattering, instantaneousness in a crash. It is the after that takes forever. There will be no smoothing over, no rendering of this mess. No matter how many times you sweep or vacuum the shards will still surface in their own time.
out
I was punched in the back one time, carrying boxes of pizza back to my office. A man walked past me and, without a word, drove his knuckles into my spine. When I was rear-ended it felt like that punch. Afterward I glanced up and saw the sun visors had been dislodged and the cover to the moonroof had been thrown open.
up
Finding a heart that beats the same speed and pitch as yours is easy. There are only so many living pulses in the world. Finding someone who throws your heart off rhythm is much harder.
down
Water seeks the path of least resistance. It changes shape to fit its container. It can move mountains, cut stone, and separate concrete. It can adapt to changes in temperature, landscape, geography, and time. There is no life without water. There is no place on earth with an absence of H2O.
down
Two-thirds of the human body is made up of water.
down
The same salt in sea water can be found in our blood. There is a slow leak in my eyes.
down
I am becoming Atacama. I am draining my internal dam.
down
I am a fish drowning on land: I have not carried the water with me.
Sarah Turner grew up the middle of three children in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. After receiving a B.A. in English from UW-La Crosse, she spent four years investigating complaints against the NYPD in New York City. She then moved to St. Paul and recently completed an M.F.A. in creative writing from Hamline University, where she served as an assistant editor for Water~Stone Review. Her work has been published in rock, paper, scissors; She Bear Literary; and Versus. She writes CNF with a humorous tilt and can be found blogging on sarahinsmalldoses.wordpress.com or performing improv as a student at Brave New Workshop.