"...and the flicks and flashes are all you keep."

“Hope is the last thing ever lost.”

--Italian proverb

My mother told me I was conceived by the waterfalls. This place down south was unknown to my own memory, but now it is maybe the only place left unscathed by the monstrosities that unfold when man and earth go to war; it is maybe the only place I have left.

My mother left my father back there to return to her home in the swampy gulf, though all things considered, we all may have been better off if she hadn’t.

The small boat rocked slowly, taunting me to look down. Instead of succumbing to the tease of waves, my sights went to my feet. Smooth cypress against the bottom of them held the scent of sulfurs and mildew. Even in my desertion, pieces of home still followed me.

*********************************************************

I remember going swimming with my brother one night--long before the wars--at high moon hours. “Just relax, Shevez,” the recollection of his voice rang in my ears, “Let the water be soft to you.” This was my brother’s best attempt at consolation. I’d never been out that deep but he pushed me to be fearless. And we crept our toes through the wet sand until our tongues were catching salt water from waves at our necks.

The whimpers of a baby and the groans of the hungry, lurking marauder who ran the gondola came from all directions. The young mother of the baby pressed the infant to her chest so closely, it crossed my mind that the baby might’ve existed in that moment more for the comfort of its mother than the other way around.

The gondola ferries were our quarter’s best kept secret—and a peril like all hopes were. A bronze-skinned marauder brushed past me, flaunting doughty arms marked up with Choctaw symbols. He wordlessly continued on to his post where he bellowed out that we were getting into the deep of the sea, and to bid the Wretched Days goodbye. Against the will of my body, and with a prayer to not turn to salt, I dared myself to look back.

***********************************************************

My brother could’ve been a merman in another life. While we then tasted the waters of home, we turned back to look at the place we’d always known. From the coast looking in, it seemed quieter than what it was. All we could hear were the crickets and the croaks, then the slow resonance of Mr. Ruvie’s saxophone. The coastline was where you could always find him. His skin was black enough to be a ghost of the night, as he opted to operate. Most of us in the quarter knew Mr. Ruvie as a common bindle and jewel thief by day, but the night crawlers knew him to be an architect of the jive that kept breath flowing through the choking quarter. He took the protection of my brother & I upon himself. Once, he’d given false witness when Ms. Lorraine from the French Quarter accused us of robbing her apricot trees. We had done it, of course, and no one believed anything that escaped his mouth anyhow, but he always tried for us.

Mr. Ruvie was an ougan, but you’d never tell at first from the rags on his back--even more tattered than the rest of ours. Hairs of his coarse & unkept beard would curl into his mouth when he’d break a smile to tell my brother and I,

“The Iwa may take you on a wild ride, but to a knowing spirit, it will never lie.”

And then he’d go back to blowing his sax or strumming some stringed instrument he’d jacked from some unfortunate sir. One night, right after the life of my brother was lost to us, he’d tossed me a rock of emerald, with a promise it’d one day shine as a sign of belief to me. He waved his right hand over his left and revealed an equally sized emerald that he would keep. “For home,” he said, and disappeared into the night.

**************************************************************

“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.”

--Warsan Shire

Clouds hung above the gondola now--puffy and white, and the sky was like the water. Against it, the two shreds of flags—one black, green, and red striped, the other indigo, with a golden seal encompassed by a baby blue— flew fondly, gracefully, as if they had found a special comfort in the wind. The infant passenger had decided to convert his cries to giggles, and the young mother seemed to have found a peace within it. She noticed me staring and cracked a gapped smile to me, then back to the child.

***********************************************************

My mother had a laugh like dripping molasses. The kind that could maybe fill a room with warmth and sweetness. She was sent to The Shacks, where glee was unwelcomed. A late night discrepancy which was neither understood nor explained to the quarter swept her in the wrath of the peregrine's prison. It was a lot of barbed wires which sanctioned all but murder. The discrepancy was made clear to me as bloodshot, icy eyes stared back at me from my mother’s bedroom doorway. There were whimpers behind the closed door. He caught his breath to snarl it at me, then the heavy of his boots ran out of the house and into the depths of the swamp. I didn’t recognize the former congressman with so much horror in his face. The discrepancy was quarter mumble for weeks until those icy eyes, accompanied by a few others, hammered down our hatches and hauled my mother away.

****************************************************************

“When we love, we gamble the odds for these corner of our hearts to be merlot-stained in the redolence of remembrance...memories that play like novelled depictions on a black and white screen--so warming a sense, and so distant. And these flicks and flashes are all you keep.”

--J.S. Mongo

Like a child plucked from the womb of her mother, all I longed for was the waterfalls.

In this moment, the very chance for better was all I had, and there were no guarantees in that. Who was to say I was not only following after more despair to come? What was a hope to be in the face of the desolate? With these thoughts--these memories, the depths of the gulf spoke to me, beckoning me to the bottom. Tears fell into my empty hands. There was nothing--there was nothing. My heart wrenched for what I once had, and my only restoration might be waiting for me when I hit the ocean floor. No one was watching me now--only the sky. And before I prepared to fling myself into the only thing that was sure, I gave my last look to the shores of home.

The swamp looked like a dream behind the fog that whisped over it like a forcefield. A grey cloud above slid over to give room to the sun and something from the shore caught its light--glimmering. A few flicks--a few flashes, and then it stuck. A ray as green as Eden shot through the fog and my eyes couldn’t leave it.

That Mr. Ruvie was something else.

I ran to my satchel and retrieved my stone. Raising it delicately to the sun, it shone back as sure as his rhymes and his promises. I wished to myself I would have found him in time to bring him with me, but something in me knew, he was right where he wanted to be. He had more work to do there, more dreams to keep. More light that only he could shine.

So the rays served as our farewells, and my turn to make the promise to him: to persist, and to never forget home.