The sea had taken him again.
He didn’t curse it. That was not his way.
The boat had gone down between Zanzibar and Mogadishu.
A tramp boat, patched and repatched,
with a belly full of bad diesel and rusted bolts
that could no longer hold against the weight of another storm.
It came in the dark.
The wind didn’t howl; it pressed.
The water didn’t rise fast; it just didn’t stop.
He had seen worse,
but not with a bad engine
and a deck that groaned with each swell.
When the bow split,
he didn’t shout or pray.
He cut loose the things he didn’t need.
Kept a knife, a flask,
a bit of sailcloth for shade,
and drifted.
The sea gave nothing.
Not on the first day. Not on the fifth.
By the eighth, his skin burned raw,
his tongue swollen from salt
he could not keep out.
He drank from the sky
when it wept in passing.
The coral reef was hidden.
It waited beneath the waves
like a memory that cuts deep
when you forget it’s still there.
His leg tore open
from thigh to shin.
The blood called the sharks,
but they passed him by.
He wasn’t ready to go.
They knew.
He washed up like driftwood
south of Mogadishu,
bleeding, broken,
but breathing.
They found him—
barefoot men, lean with eyes like obsidian,
faces carved by sun and sand.
They said nothing at first.
He didn’t need words.
They carried him like a bundle of net.
Dressed the wound with bark and ash.
Fed him fish and a thick, bitter tea.
When the fever came,
they watched.
When it passed,
they nodded.
He spoke to them in signs,
in the hard-edged motions of men
who know death
but haven’t found it yet.
Twelve days, he said.
Twelve days.
They gave him no pity.
He liked that.
When he could walk again,
he walked to the beach
and looked out over the sea.
The waves rolled in
like they always had.
Like they always would.
He didn’t blame them.
That wasn’t the point.
It wasn’t the first time.
Wouldn’t be the last.
He had lived through wars,
storms,
betrayals.
He had loved three women
and lost them all
to time and duty and silence.
His body had scars
like rope burns on a dock post.
He’d been shot once in the ribs.
Starved in Aden.
Bitten by a rat the size of a small dog
in a cargo hold off Sri Lanka.
But the sea—
the sea gave him stories.
And when the fire dies down,
when the bottle is low,
and someone younger
asks him how he made it—
he’ll say nothing.
Just look out at the water,
and maybe, if they’re lucky,
he’ll nod.
Broken Author 