Helm’s Over, Into the Channel

Through the Fog on the Harbor, I come to port.

_____

Someone told me recently that it surprised them that I still care what anyone thinks. I replied,

“What people think of you informs how they treat you.”

I spent so much of my life in waves pulled upward by the storms of people that quiet waters served only as a brief respite—time enough to reinforce the hull again in a frenzy.

I told them that, “If I get to a point where I don’t feel like I have to worry about that anymore, I’ll be-“

“Unstoppable,” they said.

I was going to say, “The Joker,” but I digress.

_____

I landed here by accident. I moved the van from Illinois to Missouri’s capital in the middle of the night with no plan in 2024. I drifted for a few months before moving to the rural town of Salisbury for nearly a year, and came back to Columbia in the van desperately clinging to agency I felt I was losing.

I had lived on the edge of three major cities in that van, and in all of them, passing vessels were indistinguishable from serpents at a distance. And in return, I was only identifiable as the transient.

But here, I started to see beacons and flags raised by those in range, and I signaled back in a language that more of them understood than I had experienced before.

I’ve come into the harbor reconciling how “Hello” sounds more like “Welcome,“ than “You’re not from around here, are you,” in recent months.

What may be a gentle coastal wind for many,

is loud like cannon fire for me.

So I prepare to make fast, before I truly even know what the hell that means.