Without a moon, the lack means new.
We swim out to sea, unseeing, unseen, and unpredictable. We were what it takes to move a tide but now we’re abandoning shore with the ocean. We the women, climb the mountain of plastic formed by men and descend over the hill with the knowledge we will not return to land.
We confront ourselves. All is black and blue and moon. We are mad with proportion.
We abandon our beloved big wave guns, we lay down our arms. We submerge ourselves inside. Our heads bob in water like celestial spheres buoy in gravity.
The moon calls to her and she comes: Thalassa cascades from Neptune.
We are hungry.
Our fathers were sailors that called waves wolves. Below us the whales we liberated from our misdeeds swim. Grey and black and white things. Speckled like the memory of pepper. In this time we learn we were the wolves they were scared of.
We boil.
Socorro de Luca
3 Questions for Socorro
What was your process for creating this work?
Like many pieces, she went through multiple drafts, some of which included rewriting her from memory. The lines that were insistent repeated and so as I came to the final draft only the lines that refused to be forgotten stayed.
What is the significance of the form/genre you chose for this work?
For me, hybrid writing has been the most liberating genre to work with. The form allows space for the text to move, flux, and flow without constraint. Even so, it's difficult for me to define hybrid writing. I do believe it touches close to poetry, but I believe hybrid work to be the reader/writer/witness' answer to the question Did something move? without the need to name what has.
What is the significance of this work to you?
This piece has allowed me to grieve. I grieve for the environment, and I grieve for the people I've lost. I see two layers in this piece. The first layer is the desire to be held by nature, by water. The second layer is the desire to be part of a community metabolizing eco-grief. To mourn together, and then to surrender to the greater element.
Socorro de Luca is a writer in the PNW. She was awarded her MFA in Hybrid work from Goddard College. Her work has been featured in A Velvet Giant.
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