Sometimes I feel like an unanchored boat.
There is no port to call home.
No one at the dock to take me in their arms.
I know I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s not my fault I was born in a house with a leaky roof and no glass in the windows.
I had to get away. To live; not just survive.
So I built a little boat with my bare hands, finding plank of wood after plank of wood, and sealing them tight, with love and hope and hurt.
And when the hurt was too much, my love would come and pry the hammer from my fingers and hold me tight to give me a hillside to cry on.
Once the rain had passed, he would gently put the hammer back into my hands and step back, and encourage me with a smile.
I built my boat on a river of love and hurt.
Since then, it’s taken me down to the sea and then to the wide wide ocean, buffeted by the winds and the rain and the round moon on nights with no waves.
It’s a small house on a small boat, but it holds - it will not sink.
Sometimes, the hurt comes back and my boat fills up with tears. When the water gets too high, I grab my little bucket and fill it and empty it, and I pour it all out into the ocean, water back into water.
Sometimes in the midst of it, my love comes to me in his sailboat and climbs over into mine. He pries the bucket from my fingers and holds me tight.
He holds me tight and waits, until the water has seeped out on its own, or evaporated into the clouds, or turned into morning dew.
Then he gets back into his boat and we sail together for a while.
We play with the wind and the stars and the water, and I forget that I was born in a house with a leaky roof and no glass in the windows.
I have no port to call home, but I have a boat, and my boat is my home, and my love is not far.
(Marie-Noëlle Wurm)
