deepwaterwritingprompts: Text: The basement is empty, except for the rowboat. We have to keep i
deepwaterwritingprompts: Text: The basement is empty, except for the rowboat. We have to keep it there, tethered to the stairs, just in case the tide returns. We keep the rowboat down in the basement now. It can get damp down there, so once a month I go down and oil it, dry rag, rub it into the teak, long shiny streaks like wiping off the dust and making the wood new again. It sits there mopily, chained to the stairs, creaking and grumbling on its keel. I pat it down, haul it back into place, turn the lights out before I leave it. It settles down, rocking and dozy in the dark. Last time the tide came in, the rowboat got out. We almost lost it. It came bubbling out from the storage room in a flood, sailed through the kitchen, bow nosing open the cabinets in a rush, spilling out boxes, overturning tables, through the hallway and out the front door. We had to chase it halfway down the street before we caught up to it, towed it back through the muddy water, fighting currents. We had to tie it up to a lamppost, spent several miserable damp hours bobbing out there with it, until the tide finally ebbed out and we could carry it back home. Since then, we keep it chained up in the basement. Sometimes the tide swells up to the shore, and we hear it moaing. In-out, in-out, like sculling oars, in tandem to the water lapping. In-out, in-out, marking paces, scuffing tracks into the floor. If the tide comes in again, we’ll be ready. We figure the basement’ll flood and then it can be afloat once more, feel the water rush up against its hull, bear down and displace it’s weight, bob lightly. We can huddle down there with it, among the shadows, play make-believe as the waters rush outside our doors, down the storm drains, our basement cavernous in the darkness. The rowboat buoyant, weightless, raised up to its heart’s content, to the extent its chain allows it. The waters beneath us, the roof safe above our heads, floating like that until the tide finally goes down. Until then, it stays dry down in the basement. Sometimes, I listen to it sculling, and feel sorry for it. It wants the water. That’s what every rowboat wants. They’d drift downstream forever, water sloshing over their sides, riding lower, lower, the water pooling in their bellies, growing waterlogged and rotten if they could. But it’s safe down there. It can dream of moss and darkness. Dry, and oiled fine, and watertight. Our neighbor, meanwhile, keeps her rowboat up on her roof, where it keeps watch and collects bird droppings. I don’t know what she’s thinking. Probably nothing sane. I think she plans, if the tide comes in again, to clamber up and climb inside it, be lifted by the waves, fit oar to lock, maybe, and put all her back into it. Row, row, down the flooded streets and past the houses, past the lampposts, as if she meant it, rowing god knows where the tide’ll take her. Or maybe she dreams rowboat dreams, of a tide that rolls in and sweeps up houses, basements and all, carries them downstream, wild, rushing, rolling, free at last. -- source link
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