Westport River, Westport Massachusetts
Beads of glittering sweat swelled up on your golden skin as you pulled the oars, firmly but gracefully back, fore, and pushed them forward, aft, fore and back. With each stroke we slid across the water toward the sunshine, toward the soaring hunting birds, into the light. I watched as a bead of sweat broke and rolled around the mole on your neck on the way down. A mole I would later beg you not to remove. You’d ask me why, explaining that you hated it. “Because its a part of you” I’d mutter, quietly, remembering this moment, this drop of water encircling it as you rowed.
When it was my turn to row, I tried to emulate your grace, but I hadn’t grown up on a boat like you had. I’d only learned from watching you. I pushed and pulled, feeling hunched and weak and lumbering. You weren’t looking at me anyway, you were squinting into the sun. Focused ahead. I pushed and pulled. The boat lurched and creaked as I strained to make it move. Suddenly we heard a thunk and a splash. My left oar flopped heavily forward, slapping the river, as we both realized I’d knocked the oarlock out, into the murky water.
Your golden skin turned red, as you motioned for me to move aside. I tried to protest and keep rowing, but we both knew I needed to move. You somehow managed to maintain your grace, gliding the boat along without the oarlock. Hot with shame, I sunk into the seat, focused on not babbling apologies as you steered us safely home.
All our lives your birthday was three months before mine, but now it comes 34 days after your death. Every year I relive your death, and then a month later you’re born again. But you’re always 22. I never commemorate the anniversary of your death. Instead I wait 34 days, and go to the river and toss daffodils in the water, watch them float away into the light.
The year I turned 30 and you didn’t, I got an old rickety rowboat and went out on the river with a line tied to a marine magnet. I rowed to that place, and dipped my magnet in the water over and over. The cool fog and splashing river water soaked my coat. I floated south dropping in the line again and again, and rowed north, back and forth for hours until the leaky vessel started taking on too much water.
I’ve brought you daffodils on your birthday every year, and every year flowers seem like the wrong thing to give you. I want to give you the oarlock.
Isabel Mattia • She/they • Westport, Massachusetts
Isabel Mattia is an artist, teacher, and parent living on a small sheep farm in rural Rhode Island. Her work focuses on the boundaries between the living, the dead, and the not-yet-arrived. She thinks water might be a portal through those boundaries.
