Passenger

By Tamara Lang

I nest, my sleeping bag encircling me as I sit, skin-hot down sheltering this present happiness as if it were a round, warm egg. Clouds have erased the peaks beyond the harbor, and I feel the boat that formed my bed tugging at its lines, but I am a sky blue, an eggshell blue, uncracked and whole. And I don’t know why. A few days back in Seward, Alaska, I realized with a shock that I hadn’t seen snow on the ground all day, and now as I sit towards the bow watching eagles swim through a sky thick with rigging it comes to me that I haven’t felt that wrenching melancholy in days. There is a salve here, besides an awakening sea, and it soothes without knowing. And I know nothing myself, just that the lines have held and I’m having a Bloody Mary later, that friendship is worth it, that the seas will be rough, that Cordova has a soul and half an antique lamp, that the impossible sperm whale we watched bend around his deadweight drop to the bottom of Prince William Sound has somehow surfaced into the reason that I open my eyes. I know that I could see anything today but probably won’t, and the world is here regardless. And that life is an egg, warm.