When You Swim Out into the Ocean
By Claudia Wair
You float on your back, your face barely above water. There’s nothing but the silence of the ocean in your ears. In the saltwater’s embrace, you drift, weightless. You stare at the clouds above, trying to empty your mind. You’re away from the beach. Not so far that the lifeguard blows her whistle, just far enough from the splashers and the screamers.
The ocean is peace.
Here, you’re a gently bobbing body, not a stupid nigger, like the man on the boardwalk said when he bumped into you. The water doesn’t care that your skin is dark brown or that your hair curls tight. You’re a small human in a vast ocean.
The rage subsides to a dull ache. Your muscles finally relax. You roll over and swim back to shore. Stroke, stroke, breathe. Stroke, stroke, breathe. Then you feel gravity again, feel the sand, feel the breeze. You find your white friends and sit on your towel. No one asks how you are.
And you pretend you are fine.
Claudia Wair is a writer and editor from Virginia. Her work has appeared in JMWW, The Wondrous Real Magazine, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Corvid Queen, and elsewhere. You can read more at claudiawair.com, or find her on Twitter @CWTellsTales.
Photo credit: “At Sunset” by Giuseppe Milo via a Creative Commons license.
A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.