By Ali Mckenzie-Murdoch
“Nor a Drop to Drink”
I float on the lullaby waves. The searing sun crowns me, and I tilt my chin, the water cooling my skull. I spiral inside myself—a girl in a red coat running along the shoreline, a thread unspooling among the pebbles. My pigtails are uneven, stray bits of hair stick out; the parting zig-zags down the back of my head.
*
The velocity of water molecules determines their form—from mist to sea to glacier. In Scandinavia, people plunge into ice baths after saunas to improve their circulation. In the past, insane asylums used cold water torture as a ‘treatment’ to subdue psychiatric patients.
*
How have I drifted so far? I paddle back to shore, lifting one arm at a time with deep, steady strokes, drawing arcs above the grey water. Salt stings my eyes, and my legs flop out of sync. The liquid is leaden. My lungs are those of a small animal.
*
Osmosis is the movement of water molecules through a semipermeable membrane. Borders are like a cell membrane—if crossed, their permeability will never be the same.
*
No one plaits my hair anymore. It streams behind me, and I swim against the tide. The shore blurs in my bloodshot eyes, the heavy breath of the sea sucks me out again, knocking me down as I scrabble on the ground sliding beneath my feet. My knees scrape the rocks before I can stand.
*
In North Africa, on the frontier of Fortress Europe, clouds of tear gas shroud the men climbing the fence. Their eyes burn, and tears swell as the velocity of fear increases. This is how water is poisoned. This is how water is weaponised. This is how water keeps others out.
“In Between”
I.
The fake sunrise from my alarm clock washes the ceiling tangerine as our son whimpers in his bed, grieving the only home he has known. We’ve slept our last night here.
II.
Threshold, derived from limen in Latin, refers to the liminal, a transitional place or time between the past and the future. The gap between boundaries. Ambiguous, disorienting.
III.
Transitioning into a lighter place, every trace of us swept and binned, we throw away bulging bags of washed-out T-shirts, baby clothes, and my old wedding dress—ivory satin decorated with raffia and beads—a relic of another marriage, another life.
IV.
Forced to flee, living in flux, thousands travel through transit zones from nowhere to nowhere, slipping between borders into twilight.
V.
I will say my goodbyes to each room. Remember our newborn snuggling on a sheepskin rug, hear the creaking herringbone parquet floors, relive my postpartum vigil at the bedroom window, the slow-motion clouds. A heron flies over the river, gliding past the Helvetia hotel. I’ve left many homes, but none as difficult to leave as this.
VI.
In Irish Celtic lore, thin places are where heaven is nearer to earth, where the veil between worlds is porous, such as sacred stone circles or high on mountain tops.
VII.
We wobble on a tightrope, traversing the no-man’s-land of cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, and the movers’ sour sweat as they haul chairs, paintings, and my piano two flights of stairs.
VIII.
Under burning skies, families scatter, and parents write their children’s names on their legs in case they get pulled out of the rubble. It’s hard to breathe when you’re afraid. Closer to the next world. In the thinnest of places.
losing our grip on purpose 