Resilience
Kayleigh Spicer's response to Zubair Ahmed's poem "The Water of Lake Tahoe" from City of Rivers
Play this while you read:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7GzJBAIhRk&feature=youtu.be
City of Rivers
The sound of water repairs my skin.
I stand inside the wind,
Breathing in the tips of the waves
And the branches coated
In pre-dawn ice.
I'm afraid to go anywhere.
I'm afraid of the empty rooms
That await me,
The photos on my table
That must be sorted,
The heaps of paper being folded
By the ghosts who refuse to haunt me.
What a compelling first line. It makes me ponder at the idea of how powerful water really is. I drink it, and I am replenished. I bathe in it, and I am clean. I pray with it, and I am safe. When I need a place to cry, to sing, or to have deep conversations with myself, I go to a place where water pours down on my naked skin. I meditate to the natural sound water makes as it trickles from a fountain. My skin radiates after a dip in the salty ocean. This is all because I am water, and water is me. So when I take a sip of it, or splash it on my face, or listen to the song it sings, I am finding a part of me again. I live by the line “The sound of water repairs my skin” because time and time again, it has. (Ahmed 55).
I recall the time my entire soul fell to pieces. It was mid shower that I realized I had been deeply depressed. It mainly stemmed from being in an unhappy relationship. But I, too, feared “empty rooms” and “photos on my table/ That must be sorted”(Ahmed 55). So I stayed, until I couldn’t anymore. I made sure that when the time came, all my shit was packed, so I only had to look at the empty apartment once. Have you ever been judged by bare walls in a vacant apartment before? It’s unsettling. I hid all my memories in a box beneath my bed, and I have allowed myself to rummage through it only when I am ready. Since that day, I forbade myself to love a person who was ok with robbing me of my water, but did not wish to refill my cup whenever I needed a sip. I had built a life with this person, but over time pieces of me began to crumble. Some pieces of me had been so quenched, they began to rot. I was left with gaping holes where there was once trust, security, and positivity. I needed thousands of barrels of water just to piece myself back together. Many aching months had passed before my soul became resilient like the water that fixed me.
I am still afraid of empty rooms, but now for different reasons. I was able to survive the death of a relationship because no one actually died. But will I survive something bigger? Like literally losing a lover because their time on earth expired, will I survive that? I imagine losing someone who replenishes me in all the right ways and I do the same for them, and then my body turns to dust because I have to stare in to an empty room that we once made memories in. Pictures will not suffice. If they refuse to haunt me, will that make things better or worse? Too many questions...
I quickly splash water on my face. I wash away my crippling fears. And like that I am
whole again. “The sound of water repairs my skin.”
RelaxingWhiteNoise. “Super Relaxing Water Sounds | Nature White Noise | For Sleep,
Studying or Meditation | 10 Hours.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Mar. 2017. Web.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7GzJBAIhRk&feature=youtu.be
City of Rivers
The sound of water repairs my skin.
I stand inside the wind,
Breathing in the tips of the waves
And the branches coated
In pre-dawn ice.
I'm afraid to go anywhere.
I'm afraid of the empty rooms
That await me,
The photos on my table
That must be sorted,
The heaps of paper being folded
By the ghosts who refuse to haunt me.
What a compelling first line. It makes me ponder at the idea of how powerful water really is. I drink it, and I am replenished. I bathe in it, and I am clean. I pray with it, and I am safe. When I need a place to cry, to sing, or to have deep conversations with myself, I go to a place where water pours down on my naked skin. I meditate to the natural sound water makes as it trickles from a fountain. My skin radiates after a dip in the salty ocean. This is all because I am water, and water is me. So when I take a sip of it, or splash it on my face, or listen to the song it sings, I am finding a part of me again. I live by the line “The sound of water repairs my skin” because time and time again, it has. (Ahmed 55).
I recall the time my entire soul fell to pieces. It was mid shower that I realized I had been deeply depressed. It mainly stemmed from being in an unhappy relationship. But I, too, feared “empty rooms” and “photos on my table/ That must be sorted”(Ahmed 55). So I stayed, until I couldn’t anymore. I made sure that when the time came, all my shit was packed, so I only had to look at the empty apartment once. Have you ever been judged by bare walls in a vacant apartment before? It’s unsettling. I hid all my memories in a box beneath my bed, and I have allowed myself to rummage through it only when I am ready. Since that day, I forbade myself to love a person who was ok with robbing me of my water, but did not wish to refill my cup whenever I needed a sip. I had built a life with this person, but over time pieces of me began to crumble. Some pieces of me had been so quenched, they began to rot. I was left with gaping holes where there was once trust, security, and positivity. I needed thousands of barrels of water just to piece myself back together. Many aching months had passed before my soul became resilient like the water that fixed me.
I am still afraid of empty rooms, but now for different reasons. I was able to survive the death of a relationship because no one actually died. But will I survive something bigger? Like literally losing a lover because their time on earth expired, will I survive that? I imagine losing someone who replenishes me in all the right ways and I do the same for them, and then my body turns to dust because I have to stare in to an empty room that we once made memories in. Pictures will not suffice. If they refuse to haunt me, will that make things better or worse? Too many questions...
I quickly splash water on my face. I wash away my crippling fears. And like that I am
whole again. “The sound of water repairs my skin.”
RelaxingWhiteNoise. “Super Relaxing Water Sounds | Nature White Noise | For Sleep,
Studying or Meditation | 10 Hours.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Mar. 2017. Web.
Kayleigh Spicer says: Something about the first line of the poem struck me like a surge of electricity. The kind that pumps through my body anytime I get deja vu. You know! Like that goosebumpy out of body type of feeling. Even if you don't know, the point is I have great opinions towards water. I often confine in water after a long day. I find it never judges me, even when I subject it to my unsymmetrical nude body. It evicts the stress that temporarily moves in on the vacant parts of my soul. It literally gives me life, and in a sense, so did this poem.