JUMP!

I need to be honest with you

Every night, when I carried the ship’s waste to the rail and emptied it into the sea. I would look out below. There was always a strange foam, rising like teeth to shred the night’s smooth reflection.

Hunger is only learned after being fed.

I’d sometimes close my eyes and picture myself jumping. Being met with vastness and venom, yet still, space.

Three years ago, I had failed my final examinations that were supposed to secure my scholarship and get me out of my sea-side town. If you have ever lost something you had been told was already yours, you’d know, how flat disappointment is. Days fold into each other, blurring into an osmotic shape.

I spent most of that time with my friend Nasr, throwing shells back into the sea. The way we’d be able to tell that time was passing, was through the color of the water, and when the foreign ship would come in and repair its sails.

It was always the same one. Nasr called it majestic once, then seemed embarrassed by the word. It was certainly larger than any of the local boats the fishermen took out each morning. I remember the crew. Charming us with their foreign tongue and travel stories. They’d let us smoke their leaves in alleyways before patting us on the back, making us promise not to tell anyone. I think they liked us. We weren’t like the locals, so they’d say.

Among the travellers, I found something resembling a home. It was not long before they asked if I wanted to join the crew.

I had never travelled before. I had never seen the ocean beyond the distant island that appeared when the fog lifted. I remember the first time I saw that particular blue. I had not known water could hold so much colour.

The crew told me that the man whose place I had taken was a madman. He had jumped overboard after seeing a mirage of a prince. They spoke of it without much interest.

“He killed himself,” they would say, brushing the matter aside before handing me the broom.

Waves crashed against the ship for months. I found it strange that the captain never showed his face. Whenever I asked the others about him, they would tell me, in their own manner, that this was the way of the sea.

We never docked anywhere. We never stopped to bargain for exotic fruit or fresh water. We ate only what we had stored in barrels, prying up the floorboards when the supplies ran low to see what might have been hidden underneath.

I wanted to belong. I wanted to be them. Content with their chaos, stubborn in their beliefs. I wanted to rid myself of the place I came from, to stitch a heart so foreign I would no longer recognise the villager who beat within it.

I wanted to stop being hungry.

Under a full moon, they began to look like ghosts.

I imagined they had brought me onto the ship to kill me, to return my body to the water that carried them. Sometimes I thought the ship itself was feeding on us. That we were only food for something larger beneath the waves.

When I stood at the rail and closed my eyes, I pictured the water taking me into its own. I wondered if I would find the eyes of the madman there, staring back at me. Perhaps he had seen the same thing I had. Perhaps he had simply understood before I did that there was no difference between choosing a fate and being given one.

So I stepped onto the ledge, looking at the water pursing its lips.

And jumped.

The last thing I heard was the crew screaming: “snake!”

^{Assisted by Grammarly for spelling check.}