DITW
Tanatswa Mushonga
We read the book of myths and have the selfies to prove it:
Wearing healed scars from lacerated arms.
The armour we donned as we trekked down into the deep, flawed now, yet it
clings to
skin like Sins of the father
We did this on our own
No Jacques and Co.
Me, myself, and I
Alone.
There was no ladder, no schooner,
There was no instrument of direction
There was no sign, but the water gleamed with a divine invitation
My ancestors at the bottom calling for a reunion
Going overboard needs no introduction
Our feet followed the voice of home and in we
Dove
Deeper my body fell
The light from the surface touching ghosts underneath
Figments of versions of what the deep would be
Vanish
My human flesh couldn't withstand the pressure
Consciousness and lucidity getting lesser
The sea refuted my form
The sea demanded I be reborn
Ventilated and breathing
My legs were no more
Arms turned to fins
Lungs to Gills,
My skeleton mirrored twin fish in the sky
Who knew why we came down here?
Was it to be renewed or to be free
Or both
It took a minute or three to get comfortable in your new skin,
You (we) could swim now but, where to?
The book of myths was only that, myths!
Getting acquainted with new milieu
Requires use of new information
This was always the place.
Beneath the eager glaring eyes from above
Far from patriarchal penetrative probes
Chanced with James Cameron kinda leisure
Roving and searching, a deluge of truth beginning to appear
And even then: it was easy to forget
why we ended up married to the seafloor
among the many who called the caliginous blue home
And just ‘cause you're one a dem’
Doesn't mean there are no sharks circlin’
The thing I came for
was never clear from the start
Smeared fragments of heart
I, me, her, him
Us
Me,
Navigated spaces that our bodies couldn’t breathe (nor our eyes could see)
We were the resurrected abomination of the deep
And courage sometimes was born of necessity
We who found a way
Map out the scene back to our authentic aquatic selves
We left the fictitious tales on the seafloor
Emerging with a blade, wearing sleek, rugged amphibious (skin) terrain