The man using the traveler to control the boom—and still the boat so hard to steer; mother and father each without language blaming the other—
Did a word of rage take shape in the man’s mind; did he turn to accuse; did he shout this word into the wind—he’ll never know; he can’t remember—only she will recall: the spar whipping in a crosswind, line of the traveler ripping through his hands, the boom striking his head, the father flung across the deck, the unconscious man flying toward the water—
impossible to believe
And now, ever, at last she feels it, the boat sinking slowly down, her child unsafe below, the father bobbing in waves, floating fast away from them—impossible to explain how the body thinks, how swiftly adrenaline empties the mind, blood surging to muscle, how in this deluge—epinephrine, cortisol, testosterone, serotonin—the body makes mysterious choices—
white horses break and rise
rise and shatter
The woman with her impossible strength finishes what the man started; lowers the mainsail—and now, too late, hears the pump, calls the Coast Guard, activates the locator beacon in the pocket of her vest—
thought streaks as foam
across the ocean
Even now the woman denies how much water might be in the bilge, refuses to imagine how soon water will break the sole, flood the cabin—
Never in the days and decades to come will she be able to invent a story that explains why the body chooses not to go down, rescue the child first—why it chooses instead to start the engine, circle back, find the father—why in a delirium of dopamine, the body believes saving them all still possible—
whatever word of rage he’d cried
only by wind remembered
A miracle to see him there, buoyed by his red vest, popping up high on white waves, disappearing in the hollows between them—impossible to believe she can get the boat close enough—but she does, thirty feet, there is time—
we are close, we are safe now
In her madness, in her love, she tosses the life sling, a yellow horseshoe—unspools its hundred and twenty-five feet of floating rope: so much more than she needs—
If he were conscious, he could swim ten feet, haul himself through waves, grab the rope, pull the sling, slip so easily into it—
but he’s gone, down deep
in the dark of himself
She circles him, closer and closer, and the rope begins to spiral: as it should, as he taught her: the way in is the way out: a gold labyrinth of rope to save them—
The boat so slow, mercy or curse, sluggish with water—she knows everything now, and still serotonin floods the mind, bestows faith in a future—
do not be distracted
Quick and calm, absolutely focused, the woman lifts the boarding ladder over the side of the boat, secures it to its brackets—already she imagines climbing the four steps back into the boat, hoisting her limp husband up and over—
a story to tell, years after
She is telling it to herself now as she leaps in the water, following the line to the sling, swimming the sling toward him—willing him to wake—slipping the horseshoe over his head—and still he refuses—pulling one arm and then the other up and through the sling—
skin gone white, mouth purple
Now and forever she feels the tug of the rope; sees how low the boat sits in the water—tilted starboard, sinking faster—and she knows all in one gasp the choice her body has made is forever and terrible; the adrenaline that once sustained now poisons her—she tries to swim to the boat, to the child, tries to drag the man with her—three strokes, five kicks, all she has, all she can do now—
impossible to explain
Waves pull her back; the rope tightens: if they stay tethered, they’ll go down with the boat—forever and now and so fast she pulls the rigging knife from her pocket, cuts the cord: the body wants what it wants: to be alive—even here, even now, one more moment—
all, all can be lost
the particles of one
dissolve into all others
Childless parents hanging on a single sling, terrified and human, abandoned, chopped by waves, swallowing water, depleted, small now themselves, lost between blue-gray clouds and gray-green water—
why not go down
why not stay under
Weak and wasted, numb, the man waking and sleeping, the woman failing and failing again to dive, to die, to sink fast or far enough—
Never in the ten thousand nights to come will one dare to ask the other how it was, why it happened—
Rescued, they are, childless parents—the emergency locator beacon pulled from the mother’s pocket; strobing its light; beaming its radio signal to a satellite circling the earth; the satellite flashing it back again: time and space, all illusion: that miraculous message guiding the Coast Guard pilot close enough to see the strobe and yellow sling, a man’s red vest, the woman’s neon green one—
Flooded with gratitude as they watch the helicopter hovering, small in the vast sky, blades slicing air, a devastation of sound whirling closer—
Shattered as the rope and basket swing free—as the man’s bowels unspiral, as the woman’s unstrung heart swings out across the water—
Desolated and saved as a swimmer stays in the water with him, as two crew members pull each one alone into the fuselage—
Through all the years, all the evacuated days to come, the man will remember watching the woman as she hung between infinite sky and infinite water, the green ocean going black, the sky rose and gold, radiant turquoise too beautiful to believe along the horizon—never had he loved her more than this, never more despised her—
Now, waiting on the pier, they could not stand, could not be, could not breathe if not for each other—
