Mea Andrews

Swimming

Mea Andrews

After Anne Sexton’s “Rowing” I have ridden with you like handmaid of Mnemosyne and you have left my throat parched. Let it come, my story. I was ousted with purple hair, supposedly words collected from mom’s mouth but photos record me blonde. There’s a nightmare, a cry, a pulling on my hair from crib while a train horns by. No dolls, but a collection of dollar menu TY’s. There was school number one, with naptime I denied, eyes peeled open, stared at projector lights, missed my bus stop every day that first school year. So many apartment foundations fat on the inconsistency of their tenants. My mom gutted one, sold plumbing, cabinets, nails out of the baseboards— everything but the front door. And I grew, monster pushed from bed to couch to floor cyclical, butterfly knife under my pillow.

And I grew past that, not rowing but swimming, dipping under waves to breathe, legs kicking me forward while memories like octopus ink ran me circular. My island savior, Education. Clawed onto Its beach of student debt; anything for above minimum wage, anything to build my own dinner table, the first of my life, sit people like rubies around it—self-made blood. There will be a door, I’ll make that too, and I will build a lock and I will lock it if I have to. And they won’t be able pick it with a dime they found on the ground like they did with those cheap bathroom locks.

Mea Andrews is a writer from Georgia, who currently resides in China. She has just finished her MFA from Lindenwood University and is only recently back on the publication scene. You can find her in Vermilion, Rappahannock Review, and others. You can also follow her on Instagram at mea_writes or go to her website at meaandrews.com