[{"id":11630,"date":"2026-08-19T12:46:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T17:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/?p=11630"},"modified":"2026-08-27T08:40:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T13:40:05","slug":"anansi-bruk-it-up-an-epic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/anansi-bruk-it-up-an-epic\/","title":{"rendered":"Anansi Bruk it Up: An Epic"},"content":{"rendered":"

SHORTLISTED<\/span><\/p>\n

EMILY ZOBEL MARSHALL<\/p>\n

I.<\/p>\n

You would have thought that he came into the world like the howl and beat of a storm, but it happened quietly, like a lover\u2019s whisper, soft as peaches fur. Had I not been watching, had I not been awake, I would have missed it. Sit and listen a while, my beloved, and let me tell you it came to pass.<\/p>\n

Kwaku Anansi, Wednesday-born, came into being on a day wedged between days of the week, before weeks were weeks and days were days and time was time, beloved. \u00a0Time was not time at all \u2014 just the clash and shift of tectonic plates, of continents ripping apart, reforming, reshaping and somewhere in this the steaming broth of beginning came Anansi, pushing up through the winter deserts sands under a cold and waning moon.<\/p>\n

Spider. Man. Woman. God. A light shone from his abdomen and his eyes, covered as they were with a thick mucus, protected him from the wind-whipped sands. Black skin sealed his mouth shut, no sign of cutting teeth and he was silent, oh so silent it hurt the ears to hear him, my beloved.<\/p>\n

His belly full of cosmos, fat balls hanging thick, vibrating with the big clit energy lodged in the base of his hairy spider dick. Griped with the need to part the thighs of others, the will to power, fit to brain-burst with whirling stories, with words pushing up through his guts seeking freedom \u2014 but I am getting ahead of myself, beloved.<\/p>\n

All this while he existed in the in-between, the upside down, the b-side, in both the she and he of things. And there is no smell in the desert, even when it rains; Anansi was bored \u2013 nothing to hear or smell or taste \u2014 until one day the Sky-God Nyame sent to him down a ladder made of umbilical cords.<\/p>\n

Into the realm of fierce gods Anansi climbed. The skin fell from his eyes. His long tongue was freed from his sealed mouth. On his way up, he began to story, he began to sing. Shhh, listen, hear Anansi now, his song is bringing other creatures into being, his music is spinning women man child animal \u2014 all imperfect perfection.<\/p>\n

II.<\/p>\n

You will be wondering what happens now, beloved, so you should \u2014 this is a Jackmandora story unspooling fast and wild like the Anansi thread he starts to spit and stick. He spins the story strong and long and learns to web \u2014 finer than the winged veins of a moth, tougher than an iron shackle. He web-hangs moon and stars, captures light before it wiggles free, invites the desert sunshine to bounce and bend but never break in his creation.<\/p>\n

He catches flies and shudders with pride at his web\u2019s lethal exquisiteness, created by his own fat black hairy body. \u00a0He starts to spin some more \u2013 he crafts a people, Akan Asante of Ghana, each one born knowing he is the keeper of their secrets, the spring of beginnings.<\/p>\n

Every night, after spinning drums and golden stools for them, he climbs up to the gods, tries hard to seduce the so-called omnipotent sky god Nyame\u2019s wife with his long wet silver tongue, a tongue now freed, alight, fizzing with new words birthing from spider saliva \u2014 verses, poems, prose, stanzas slip and slide from that long song tongue that links his cosmos belly to his sliver lips.<\/p>\n

Hear this, one time Anansi grew a penis 12 foot long and bruk it up into 12 pieces, slipped a piece into each of Nyame\u2019s daughter\u2019s rooms to impregnate them. He became woman too and sang songs in Nyame\u2019s ears while he slept of things he could do to him that Nyame never even knew he wanted. He was queer and sex and sexlessness and all the time storying storying storying. And I am sorry if you think this is not a tale for children, my beloved, but I hope you listen still and understand that only thorough this knowing will you follow threads to your beginning.<\/p>\n

Enraged, Nyame banished Anansi, but still he sneaked into his realm, they knew he\u2019d been there \u2014 saw his spider hair shed amongst the clouds, metallic scent of lightning hanging in the morning air, wet marks where his new long tongue had drooled and spooled his words.<\/p>\n

From Nyame he stole wisdom for his Akan people, along with toxic snakes and slow diseases \u2014 in every one of his creations smouldered fires of destruction, his anarchic howl forever testing the laws the Akan tried to lash their clan too.<\/p>\n

They told his stories, beloved, oh did they tell his stories. And tied as they were to rules, they tingled with delight to hear his freedom antics, until one day the others came and chained the Akan, tried to eat their souls in shit-packed forts, let crabs feast on their flesh, tossing their babies from the ships and once again time was not time and days were not days, but one long dark shadow of decay and agony floating on the violent waves.<\/p>\n

Anansi boarded ships and watched, eight-eyed, up in rafters, and while he felt good and bad are always tangled into one, he knew this was vile and his people were bruk up. After landing, years were not years as they slashed the cane and poured their blood onto red earth. At night after the fields, Anansi spooled and spun his stories harder than he had ever done before, no breaks to visit Nyame, he had to show people ways to trick, to burn, to break, to lie and lie, to plot, to story, to live, to hope. This is how it came to pass, beloved, and I wish it were not so. \u00a0Listen carefully to next part, and then I\u2019ll let you go.<\/p>\n

III.<\/p>\n

Hush now, Beloved, for this part of Anansi\u2019s thread is coming to an end. And entwined, twisted as it is, you must know it. Anansi was dog-beat tired after plantation story spinning long and hard. Hear Anansi preach across the wind-stirred canes in the gloaming \u2013 big word talk of rebellion, revolution, change, freedom. Sometimes the people heard him sing a self-song sung gently, sending Akan dreams, praise songs to Nyame and memories so far way they would have fallen through the holes of the mind had Anansi not been there to gather them up and sculpt their contours.<\/p>\n

Anansi\u2019s long spider legs became muscled Black thighs, Black calves, his face that of an Akan man, his spider self came to look like his own people, but don\u2019t you be tricked, Beloved, for he could shift shape from man to spider, woman, child and back again in the blink of a sleepy eye, just as he always had.<\/p>\n

When moon hid her pale face, Anansi climbed Maroon mountains to help warrior Nanny catch British bullets in her wide backside and fire them out pum pum pum into the ghostly soldiers faces. Sam Sharpe, Tacky, Cudjoe, Bogle, Queen Cubah and even Toussaint Louverture plotted with Anansi \u2014 spreading the fire rebellion with strategy and the wisdom of cunning betta than strong.<\/p>\n

So-called emancipation was proclaimed after the suffering centuries and Anansi he think ahhhh, maybe I can rest a while now, but oh no, beloved, the misery was one long sad colonising song that went on and on after the trick of freedom \u2014 \u00a0but it was not all pain, Beloved, there was also belly laughs and rebuilding and restorying and when Anansi dance at carnival in his zoot suit and sharp top hat and cane, all the ladies come and catch a little sexy wine with him and he feel his new-old African self again, and things, I hesitate to say it, my Beloved, improved a little your people.<\/p>\n

Anansi kept the past alive sharp sharp and they told his stories right there in the dancehalls and universities, the playgrounds and Maroon towns, in taxis and theatres and on the street corners under the big ticking clock of time in Halfwaytree. \u00a0And so it ends, Beloved, but the end is only a beginning for our islands suffer still and if you sit still on blue mountain forest floor you will still hear Anansi, quiet quiet, like a lover\u2019s whisper, soft as peaches fur, sing his trickster song. Stay and listen, my Beloved, and be sure to pass his story on.<\/p>\n

Anansi Bruk it Up was first published in Modron Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tEmily Zobel Marshall is a poet and Professor at Leeds Beckett University. An expert in African diasporic cultures, she\u2019s published Anansi\u2019s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance (2012) and American Trickster: Trauma, Tradition and Brer Rabbit (2019). She co-edited Oluwale Now: An Anthology of Poetry, Prose and Artwork (2023) with Sai Murry and has written two poetry collections published by Peepal Tree Press, Bath of Herbs (2023) and Other Wild (2025). Her work explores folklore, cultural resistance and ‘othered’ perspectives on the natural world.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His belly full of cosmos, fat balls hanging thick, vibrating with the big clit energy lodged in the base of his hairy spider dick. 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They dropped from my mouth, shattering into jagged porcelain pieces onto the earth below my suspended feet. When my mouth was a hole that sucked in my lips, I drifted down, almost touching the ground. When I woke up, aside from the familiar numbness of an unburied navel string, there was a jagged awareness grating through me. It was the knowing that Joseline had died. My phone rang. Gerald, Joseline\u2019s brother, was calling. Before he could speak, I told him, \u2018I know. Booked my flight already. Arriving at three this afternoon.\u2019 He stayed silent with the quietness of a man who hated taking the initiative on anything. I told him to close all the doors and windows of the family house where Joseline died.<\/p>\n<p>I packed my funeral clothes: white pants, white shirt, white panties, white bra. She\u2019d want me to wear black. I didn\u2019t eat breakfast. No time. The middle-aged Uber driver offered to take my bag, but I lugged it into the backseat with me, denting the leather seats with the wheels. He kept his eyes on the road, his stubbly jowls twitching in disapproval, smelling of the bitter bark of a wenge tree with roots holding fast to undiscovered cobalt.<\/p>\n<p>The airport was busy. Joseline chose the wrong day to die. I strode towards the airline counter, ignoring the cut-eye looks from the long line of passengers sucking their teeth. Caribbean people. I\u2019ll see some of them on the plane. Accepting that my stay here was over, I dropped my passport with its how-many-years-overstayed visa onto the counter, resigning myself to squatting in another country after my t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate with Joseline. The check-in agent hid her thoughts behind a polite smile, a thin, hardy-looking woman who favoured a guayac\u00e1n bush, one that clung to the banks of the R\u00edo Bravo, its outstretched limbs reaching toward the south. I grabbed my boarding pass from her and ran toward the security check.<\/p>\n<p>My leg bounced, at times hitting the back of the seat in front of me, causing its occupant to glance back. Their irritation was noted, and mine was growing the longer the plane stayed grounded. I needed to get to the family house. The couple across the aisle was talking about me. They were speaking kw\u00e9y\u00f2l, assuming I was some tourist or detached diaspora child who wasn\u2019t taught the language. If it\u2019s one thing Joseline gave me, aside from a bad attitude, it was kw\u00e9y\u00f2l skills that could soothe a baby to sleep or eviscerate any ego. The woman glared at me, shaking as she spoke, like the wind rattling the brittle leaves of a tropical pine. Her partner spared me a passing glance, remaining subdued like a lone sea grass bed waving in the current. I wonder what they saw when they looked at me. A cloud in the sky? A body suspended? Nothing? Away from the crushing closeness of city dwelling, the numbness I felt in my core strengthened into a gnawing emptiness.<\/p>\n<p>We were in the air now, flying over the Caribbean Sea. I hogged the window seat, forehead pressed against the glass, watching the sargassum seaweed drift on the water like streaks of old curry oil. It was midday. Joseline would\u2019ve been up for hours having completed her morning chores. She\u2019d awake in the morning dark, make her bed, pick lime leaves to boil into l\u00f2jet, then drop herself into her rocking chair, releasing a hard sigh of \u2018Yes, Father Lord, give me the strength. Thank you, Jesus,\u2019 and drink the steaming tea with tightened lips. The l\u00f2jet warming her belly, she\u2019d sweep the dirt in the front yard, gathering small pebbles, leaves, and the mawez from the night before. A practice of physical and spiritual purity, removing things seen and unseen. Even after moving away years ago, I knew Joseline had maintained this routine, and the only thing that stopped it was her death.<\/p>\n<p>Gerald picked me up from the airport. There were no hugs of grief shared between us. I had to ask him to open the trunk so I could deposit my bag. Tall and quiet, he moved with no urgency. I sighed out my irritation, watching him stroll to the back of the vehicle with the unbothered countenance of an ill-mannered child. The skin on his face was rutted, resembling the bark of a campeche tree that grew in soil that had trembled under the teetering footsteps of squatters who grew in confidence over the passing years until the land was theirs. We were silent on the drive to the house. He drove up the single lane cobbled with fallen mangoes that burst beneath the wheels. The smell of rot was heavy and sickening. I held my breath until Gerald parked in front of the house. It looked the same. Neat and clean.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Do what you have to do before sunset. People coming for the wake,\u2019 he said before driving off.<\/p>\n<p>I slunk through the front door, shutting it behind me. The air inside was stifling, a roiling heat waiting to escape. Gerald had taken care to ensure that all openings in the house were shut. A scratching noise drew me along the corridor into the kitchen. I turned the corner and paused. Joseline was standing before the sink, peeling green figs. No one could kal\u00e9 fig like Joseline. She held the fig and sliced its green jacket, wedging her thumb into the slit and sliding it around until the skin detached from the starchy white crescent. Clean and flayed, she plopped it into a pan of water.<\/p>\n<p>Joseline turned around, watching me in anticipation. \u2018Open the damn door, child.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I thought death would make you more reasonable,\u2019 I eased my way into the kitchen, my body tense and sweaty.<\/p>\n<p>Joseline sucked her teeth. \u2018The dead have more will than the living.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Where is it?\u2019 I demanded. Of course, she wanted to leave. To escape. To avoid me. She glared. A hard stare that she had perfected in life, even when she knew she was wrong. Joseline never averted her gaze, but I saw the fear. Her eyes were alight with the fa\u00e7ade of stubborn confidence, but there was an uncertain twitching of her lip. I admired her disgusting dedication.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018They had a time when I thought you was smart,\u2019 she sniffed, turning back to her green figs.\u00a0 \u2018Watch you now; big woman coming and talk to me about schupidness.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Tell me where to find it.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018No.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Tell me where it is!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018You were never supposed to born here,\u2019 she said. Her words were accented by the jerking movements of undressing the green fig. \u2018I try hard, but you drop right there on the floor.\u2019 Without looking up, she pointed the knife towards a spot down the corridor. \u2018Almost as if you wanted to make one with the floor\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n<p>She muttered that last part, so I barely heard her. This characteristic, poor projection, when she believed her words were of grave importance, irritated me. I didn\u2019t have time to listen to Joseline not answer my questions. I turned my back to hers. Her bedroom was opposite the kitchen. An orange gleam from the late afternoon sunlight lit the room. Joseline\u2019s bed was outfitted with the sheet set I had sent three years ago. It was the only useful thing I could think of to send after I strained to pay my rent. I could see the imprint of where her body had lain. It made a shallow valley in the sheets, and the light made it seem like Joseline\u2019s shadow lingered there.<\/p>\n<p>A glance behind me confirmed Joseline had followed me. Water droplets leapt from her fisted hands, making furtive teardrops on the front of her white cotton dress.<\/p>\n<p>Her words were thorny with conviction. \u2018You should learn to leave things how they are.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>I ignored her and entered the room. \u2018Sometimes I think you were happy seeing me struggle. Not attached to anything.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Everything was in its place: the white Bible, open and dissected by a chipped metal bookmark with a tasselled string; the bedroom slippers near the bed that Joseline always wore because she refused to walk barefoot; the rocking chair positioned at a companiable angle toward the only window through which Joseline would spy on me to make sure I never wandered into the tall campeche trees at the border of the land; the chest of drawers lined with porcelain animal figurines I was never allowed to touch but did anyway, breaking off a few legs or ears that made Joseline beat me; and the stuffed armoire, filled with old clothes, a broken television, and other items, the catalyst for a fight we had six years ago after I tried to persuade her to declutter. I never visited Joseline after that.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018As I die, you will appreciate what I do,\u2019 Joseline called after me.<\/p>\n<p>It shouldn\u2019t have been too difficult to find it. But it was. I had tried many times before, but Joseline knew how to keep secrets. I approached the bed and removed the sheets.<\/p>\n<p>Without looking up, I asked, \u2018What do you see when you see me?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Joseline gave her stare again. \u2018A rude, hard-head child.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>I flipped the mattress over, tracing its underside for any openings or incisions. My eyes squinted, looking for any restitched seams.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018People do things out of obligation for their children. Things they know will be good for them. Seems you didn\u2019t give a shit about that.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Joseline sucked her teeth in reprimand. \u2018When you make children, you will know why I do what I do. And you will do the same thing.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I\u2019ll never have children.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Big woman like you, with job making money, better off than me, and I raise you. You have no worries. At least I had reason to not \u2013\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018You showed me all I need to know not to,\u2019 I grunted in anger, ripping open a promising seam only to find nothing. \u2018And \u201creason to not\u201d what?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018When you old in a house by yourself, you\u2019ll suck salt,\u2019 she grumbled, ignoring my question.<\/p>\n<p>Dropping the mattress, I began lifting the bed boards. \u2018Maybe dying alone is better than forcing someone who hates me to care for me.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018When you dying alone, lying in your shit, you realise is alone you alone for true and that is dying before dying.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018You never wanted me here anyway,\u2019 I mumbled.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Even so,\u2019 Joseline sniffed as she looked away. \u2018I do what I know was good for you.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>I looked at the exposed bed boards. The floor below was empty. I moved on to the chest of drawers until it was gutted, its drawers open like lolling tongues. All of Joseline\u2019s clothes were strewn on the floor. I sifted through each garment, pressed my hands against the bottoms of all the drawers and craned my neck to search their undersides. Nothing. My focus shifted to the armoire.<\/p>\n<p>After an hour of rifling through Joseline\u2019s things, I sat on the floor below the window, my head against the wall. The room was overwhelmingly cluttered now. I hadn\u2019t found it. In a way, I didn\u2019t even know what I was looking for, but I\u2019d know it if I saw it. The sun was setting. People would be arriving soon. I\u2019d have to open the door, and Joseline would slip away for good.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018How does it feel?\u2019 I asked, looking up at her.<\/p>\n<p>She leaned against the doorframe, tutting as she surveyed my mess. \u2018Not everybody connection is a good thing.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Don\u2019t tell me about everybody. Tell me about yours,\u2019 I snapped. I had never asked anyone this before, choosing to keep my abnormality a secret.<\/p>\n<p>Joseline cleared her throat, \u2018I tell you, I didn\u2019t want you to born here.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I\u2019m tired of you telling me \u2013\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Shut your mouth. Open your damn ears and let me talk.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Her words clamped my lips. I swallowed my retort, schooling my face into an indifferent mask to hide my impatience.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"11617\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/touching-ground\/roots-exposed\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/roots-exposed-.jpg?fit=1412%2C2715&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1412,2715\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"2.4","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 13","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1775490601","copyright":"","focal_length":"1.54","iso":"32","shutter_speed":"0.0046082949308756","title":"","orientation":"1","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"roots exposed\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/roots-exposed-.jpg?fit=533%2C1024&ssl=1\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-11617\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/roots-exposed-.jpg?resize=533%2C1024&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"533\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/roots-exposed-.jpg?resize=533%2C1024&ssl=1 533w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/roots-exposed-.jpg?resize=156%2C300&ssl=1 156w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/roots-exposed-.jpg?resize=768%2C1477&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/roots-exposed-.jpg?resize=799%2C1536&ssl=1 799w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/roots-exposed-.jpg?resize=1065%2C2048&ssl=1 1065w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/roots-exposed-.jpg?resize=1080%2C2077&ssl=1 1080w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/roots-exposed-.jpg?resize=600%2C1154&ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/roots-exposed-.jpg?w=1412&ssl=1 1412w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 533px) 100vw, 533px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u2018My grandmother father own the land first,\u2019 she tapped her nail against the doorframe. Tap, tap, tap, she accented her words with that measured rhythm as if pinning them into the wood. \u2018He build his shack and stay on the land so long not even Government could move him. Everybody that born here, their navel string bury over there.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t have to guess where she meant. Her eyes looked out through the window above my head at the copse of campeche trees.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Time pass and as if nobody cannot leave the land. You see anybody in this family do anything?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Cousin Christy doing well,\u2019 I interrupted.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018That side of the family doh bury theres here.\u2019 Joseline dismissed me with a twitch of her lip. \u2018Anyways, watch Gerald. I love my brother, but he lazy. My mother-mother was so. I hated that woman. She was a poor pity. Stupid. Weak.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Joseline was deep in her storytelling. She looked like a little girl in her knee-length nightdress. For the first time, I noticed her bare feet, small and shuffling as she spoke.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I know Gerald would be too lazy to make child, and I say the stagnation ending with me, too. I leave here once, you know,\u2019 she remarked, a tight smile tugging at her lips. \u2018My mother-mother throw words for me. She say something will bring me back here. She was right. You\u2026 you was a floops\u2014a mistake. I doh bury yours because if you had touch ground here, you will never leave.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Joseline\u2019s rigid confidence had fallen. Her frantic eyes searched my face. I would\u2019ve thought that her discomfort would\u2019ve comforted me. A younger me would\u2019ve relished this moment. But I couldn\u2019t. Joseline was hurting, and I felt compassion.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Why didn\u2019t you tell me?\u2019 I whispered, afraid to break the soft silence.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Times come and I wanted to. I was afraid you\u2019d still decide to bury it here\u2026 anywhere.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018But it would have been my choice.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Joseline looked away. \u2018Choose now if you want. Is good I not alive to know.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>A laugh burst from my lips. I did not stop until I was sobbing through gasps of breath. It was almost a relief to return to Joseline\u2019s selfish ways after her uncharacteristic openness. I gathered myself off the floor. Outside, the blue dark was encroaching on the sunset. People will be here soon. I had to release Joseline.<\/p>\n<p>My belly ached in disappointment as I stepped over the accumulation of Joseline\u2019s lifetime. I shouldn\u2019t have expected anything more. I was almost at the door when I slipped on a pile of scattered cassette tapes. My knee wobbled in middle-aged protest. I grabbed onto the upended mattress to try to slow my fall. I landed with a hollow thud, and the mattress, along with the pillows and bundled-up sheets, fell onto me. I lay stunned under the embarrassing heap.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018If you was drinking the sea moss I had send for you, your knee would never give way,\u2019 Joseline tutted.<\/p>\n<p>Rolling my eyes, I shoved the pile off me. As I transferred my weight to my hands to heave myself up, I felt something pressing into my hand. It wasn\u2019t solid, but it was firm enough to keep its shape. My hand rested on one of the pillows. I lifted it, but there was nothing underneath. Pressing into its centre, I felt something inside.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Stop,\u2019 Joseline warned.<\/p>\n<p>I stripped off the pillowcase and ripped through the pillow with the chipped Bible bookmark, digging through the brown, frothy feathers until my fingers curled around something. After dusting away the lint and feathers, I held a small package enclosed in a clear sandwich bag. I undid the knot and removed a small bundle of soft, knitted baby socks. Inside was yellowed tissue paper, still fragrant with scented talcum powder. My hands shook as I unwrapped the tissue. There it was, grey and white dusted. Disintegrating remnants of umbilical cord clinging to a cord clamp.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Look it now,\u2019 Joseline was giving me a hard stare, but her turned-down lips revealed her sadness. \u2018Choose if you want to touch ground or not.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I didn\u2019t need to bury it after all; I had lived this long without it. Joseline\u2019s story made sense, and I understood why she did what she did. It still stung, and I couldn\u2019t dispel my curiosity about what it would feel like. I could make that choice. I stared at the tiny cord clamp and the grey flesh that still clung to it. Could this even make a connection?<\/p>\n<p>Headlights shone coming up the driveway. They would be here in minutes, and I had to let Joseline go.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Thank you, Joseline,\u2019 I said, returning her gaze. Joseline didn\u2019t reply, and I didn\u2019t need her to. We left the room, passed the quiet kitchen with its lingering smell of green figs and up the corridor toward the front door. Joseline stood behind me, feet shuffling in whispers against the floorboards. My hand hesitated on the doorknob, but there was no use keeping her any longer. I opened the door. The house sighed as the hot air rushed to meet the night, loud with the whistling of frogs. Stepping aside, I gave Joseline space to walk out. She was over the threshold before I could release a trembling breath. It appeared that her feet were not touching the ground, as if scorning the soil she had swept for a lifetime. She never turned back, but my gaze remained on the taciturn tilt of her shoulders until she passed the campeche trees before disappearing into the dark.<\/p>\n<p>A flash of headlights hit my eyes, causing me to squint, and the tears I hadn\u2019t realised I was holding back glinted in the oncoming light. I stood in the doorway, clutching the crumbling remains of the only connection I had to this land\u2026 to Joseline, as the line of distant relatives parked in the front yard. There was a tugging feeling in my gut. Different to my usual numbness. A concentration of feelings that made me see Joseline. Fallible. Mother. Broken child. Perhaps I will wear black to her funeral.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tJessie Mayers is a writer from Saint Lucia and a master\u2019s student at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. She is the first Saint Lucian to be shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her work has been published in adda and is forthcoming in Callaloo 44.3. She is currently writing a novella about the eating habits of the living and the dead.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joseline was standing before the sink, peeling green figs. No one could kal\u00e9 fig like Joseline. She held the fig and sliced its green jacket, wedging her thumb into the slit and sliding it around until the skin detached from the starchy white crescent. Clean and flayed, she plopped it into a pan of water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":11617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1747,728594609,728594591],"tags":[728594619],"class_list":["post-11611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-jessie-mayers","category-pree-15","tag-pree-15","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Touching Ground - PREE<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/touching-ground\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Touching Ground - PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Joseline was standing before the sink, peeling green figs. No one could kal\u00e9 fig like Joseline. She held the fig and sliced its green jacket, wedging her thumb into the slit and sliding it around until the skin detached from the starchy white crescent. 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Arrival and other Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>JAMIR NAZIR<\/p>\n<h3>The Arrival,<br \/>\nNazir, my grandfather and great grandmother<\/h3>\n<p>She left the others in the doorway.<br \/>\nTold them: wait.<br \/>\nTook his hand \u00a0\u2014 \u00a0Nazir, the younger one \u00a0\u2014<br \/>\nand walked toward the water.<br \/>\nThe recruiter found her already moving.<br \/>\nAlready looking for her husband.<br \/>\nHe just pointed her<br \/>\nat a ship<br \/>\nand said: “he\u2019s there.”<br \/>\nShe packed her small god.<br \/>\nHer pot.<br \/>\nHer few pieces of jewelry<br \/>\npressed against her skin.<br \/>\nShe believed him \u2014<br \/>\nas one believes<br \/>\nwhen the alternative<br \/>\nis to stand still,<br \/>\nto let the horizon swallow the shore.<br \/>\nThe shore went small.<br \/>\nThen gone.<br \/>\nNazir remembered the trees.<br \/>\nThe Bhojpuri singing<br \/>\nhanging in the village air.<br \/>\nHe didn\u2019t know<br \/>\nhe was memorising it.<br \/>\nHis mother stood at the railing<br \/>\nlooking for his father\u2019s face<br \/>\nin every face<br \/>\nuntil there was only water<br \/>\nand she understood<br \/>\nand said nothing<br \/>\nand kept looking anyway.<br \/>\nNo husband at the other end.<br \/>\nA man with a list.<br \/>\nA finger pointing at the cane.<br \/>\nShe set her small god<br \/>\non the shelf above the door.<br \/>\nShe sang the old songs at night<br \/>\nso Nazir would keep<br \/>\nhis language in his mouth.<br \/>\nShe never said the husband\u2019s name.<br \/>\nNot once.<br \/>\nNot in all the years that followed<br \/>\nin that field<br \/>\nunder that other sun.<br \/>\nI am his grandson.<br \/>\nI have the trees he couldn\u2019t forget.<br \/>\nI have the songs I never heard<br \/>\nbut know the shape of.<br \/>\nI have her \u00a0\u2014<br \/>\na woman who left half her children<br \/>\nin a doorway in Bihar<br \/>\nand crossed the black water<br \/>\nlooking for her husband<br \/>\nand never found him<br \/>\nand didn\u2019t stop<br \/>\nfor a single day of it.<br \/>\nThe salt took what it needed.<br \/>\nShe gave the rest \u2014<br \/>\nthe cracked bone, the silent name, the dust of Bihar \u2014<br \/>\nentirely to the soil.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s all.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s everything.<\/p>\n<h3>The Call of Her Eyes<\/h3>\n<p>The day was ordinary \u2014<br \/>\njust sky and heat<br \/>\nand her standing there \u2014<br \/>\nI looked up and was caught \u2014<br \/>\nnot mirrors, not maps,<br \/>\nbut clear enough to get lost in \u2014<br \/>\ntwo questions asking me back.<\/p>\n<p>Her laughter startled the birds,<br \/>\nscattered light across my hands \u2014<br \/>\nIt startled me like torn cloth \u2014<br \/>\nan ordinary sound<br \/>\nthat empties a room of pretence.<\/p>\n<p>I feel her eyes on me<br \/>\nthe way you feel the sun<br \/>\nlong after you’ve turned away \u2014<br \/>\nThey rise when the lamp flickers,<br \/>\nwhen I read and lose my place,<br \/>\nwhen I lie awake<br \/>\nand my name hangs in the silence<br \/>\nbetween us \u2014<\/p>\n<p>I forget to count the minutes,<br \/>\nforget what day it was before she looked at me \u2014 su<br \/>\nyet I fill these pages with her \u2014<br \/>\nFor what else can I do<br \/>\nbut answer the pull that rewrites me?<\/p>\n<p>There’s no answer.<br \/>\nOnly this: I fill pages.<br \/>\nShe fills me.<\/p>\n<h3>The Master’s Empty Chair<\/h3>\n<p>The bell rang.<br \/>\nBoys filled the yard, laughing, arguing, playing. Everything felt normal.<br \/>\nThen I saw your classroom.<br \/>\nThe door was open.<br \/>\nYour chair stood behind the desk, pushed back, as if you had just stepped out.<br \/>\nI kept expecting you to return.<br \/>\nSir, I still had your book.<br \/>\nYou told me not to rush it. \u201cBooks are not races.\u201d<br \/>\nI laughed. You didn\u2019t \u2014 then you did.<br \/>\nOnce, I gave you a story.<br \/>\nYou returned it covered in red.<br \/>\n\u201cGood. Now we can begin.\u201d<br \/>\nYou stayed after school and explained every mark.<br \/>\nAt assembly, the headmaster spoke.<br \/>\nI remember your name. The word loss. The heat.<br \/>\nAt lunch, I went behind the library.<br \/>\nYou once found me there after I failed a test.<br \/>\nYou listened, then pointed to a goat eating newspaper.<br \/>\n\u201cIf that goat can survive today\u2019s headlines, you\u2019ll survive mathematics.\u201d<br \/>\nI laughed until it hurt.<br \/>\nRain came that afternoon.<br \/>\nLessons drifted when it rained. Somehow, we always learned something.<br \/>\nSchool ended.<br \/>\nEveryone left.<br \/>\nI stayed.<br \/>\nI took out your book, traced your name.<br \/>\nThe room felt empty in a new way.<br \/>\nI looked at your chair.<br \/>\nFor a moment, I heard your voice:<br \/>\n\u201cWell?<br \/>\nWhat have you got for me today?\u201d<br \/>\nI lowered my head.<br \/>\nAnd began to write.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tJamir Nazir is a poet and author from Trinidad and Tobago. In 2026 he won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for The Serpent in the Grove. He is the author of the poetry collection Night Moon Love. His poems have also appeared in anthology collections published in India and the United Kingdom. His writing draws on Caribbean landscapes, culture, and experience while exploring love, memory, identity, mortality, and the wider human condition. Beyond literature, Nazir has had a distinguished and extensive career in senior management across the Caribbean region.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The salt took what it needed.<br \/>\nShe gave the rest \u2014<br \/>\nthe cracked bone, the silent name, the dust of Bihar \u2014<br \/>\nentirely to the soil.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s all.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[728594606,422,728594591],"tags":[728594619],"class_list":["post-11563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jamir-nazir","category-poetry","category-pree-15","tag-pree-15","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Arrival and other Poems - PREE<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/the-call-of-her-eyes-and-other-poems\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Arrival and other Poems - PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The salt took what it needed. 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She gave the rest \u2014 the cracked bone, the silent name, the dust of Bihar \u2014 entirely to the soil. That\u2019s all. 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It sat low on the waterline, thigh-deep, one plank wide at the bottom. Then it widened from the base, until it was broad enough for a couple of benches, one in front of the other.\u00a0 Four curlicued lengths of wood branched out from the head and tail, joined on either side by stabilising planks that skimmed the sea. The boat shone a bright painted white with twirling patterns in a forthright red and blue. It looked like a creature. Not an insect, for it didn\u2019t have quite enough limbs, but nevertheless like something ornate and made to fly.<\/p>\n<p>The boat would originally have been for fishing, with a small crew using oars or paddles. Now modified for tourist excursions, it had a small engine that grumbled roughly and let out the occasional bloom of smoke.<\/p>\n<p>Scott stood at the back at the tiller, amid the snorkel masks and fins. He used the long lever to steer them. The other two sat on their benches, feet dangling, eyes out for the buoy.<\/p>\n<p>They were old friends. Jack and Lola had been a couple already when they\u2019d met Scott at a drinks party for exchange students in Paris. Scott and Jack had made a habit of going to an awful Irish pub by Grands Boulevards every Sunday to watch the rugby. Soon after that, they\u2019d started going as a group of three to old queer cinema reruns every so often as a peace offering to Lola, who at that time, deep in a flush of second-wave feminist discovery, had taken to describing herself as a reluctant heterosexual. They\u2019d found an ease in one another\u2019s company, watching the whole <em>Doom Generation <\/em>trilogy a series of Saturday afternoons one November; gossiping each week over gin fizz at the bar on Rue Saint-Martin.<\/p>\n<p>Lola\u2019s impulse to push against the mores of her upper-middle-class upbringing \u2013 an impulse more pedestrian than it was rebellious \u2013 was in large part what had drawn her to Jack in the first place. The boy with the diamond stud in his ear who she\u2019d approached with characteristic boldness at the freshers\u2019 fair. She\u2019d read his brown skin and loose trousers as a shorthand for the unknown, even though she soon found out that he\u2019d grown up in a nice semi-detached in Surrey. It was that same impulse that had drawn her to Scott, who when they\u2019d met in Paris was already enmeshed in a rotation of much older men, had sworn the chains of monogamy would never take him.<\/p>\n<p>As the three of them made their way through their twenties, their friendship had settled across continents and careers and mutual acquaintances\u2019 weddings into something with the ease and stature of an old building, something solid that could breathe as the world changed around it.<\/p>\n<p>At the front, Jack reached into the bottom of the boat, extracted his rash vest and pulled it on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m too hot, I might get in.\u201d He didn\u2019t turn as he said it.<\/p>\n<p>Behind him, Lola pushed a tussock of fine blonde hair behind her ear, then put her hand up to her eyes.<\/p>\n<p>Scott called out over the engine to him. \u201cWill you take one of the stabilisers or did you want me to stop?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t really want to get there too late. You can\u2019t see anything when the sand comes up in the tide. That\u2019s what they told us at the kiosk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lola was still moody in the afterglow of their argument. She had a tendency to sharpness which in good times made her a riot. Now, in her hurt, that sharpness was heavy on them all and the men knew not to provoke it further.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll hold one of the stabilisers then,\u201d Jack replied.<\/p>\n<p>Scott killed the engine and gave a thumbs up. \u201cJust stay near the front will you? I\u2019d rather you didn\u2019t get sucked into the prop if you let go.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jack turned and slid from the front of the boat. There was barely any swell, and the water was a saccharine, untroubled blue. After a couple of seconds, he surfaced and took hold of the stabiliser. He looked up at Lola to his right. The sun played little gems off his sandy skin. He beamed at her. She looked back at him in exasperation, with something else unreadable at the edges of her pink mouth. She turned away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just think it\u2019s funny that you\u2019d bring me halfway around the world, and speak to my Dad about proposing beforehand, if you weren\u2019t actually going to do it,\u201d she remarked to a passing gull. \u201cWe leave tomorrow.\u201d The bird cocked its head.<\/p>\n<p>Since their days in Paris, Jack and Lola had settled for corporate roles that afforded them all the hallmarks of millennial success. The freehold in Zone Two that they\u2019d upgrade when her inheritance came in; the luxury of planning for children without worrying about the cost of a nanny. Lola had over the years cultivated a healthy disdain for women who were eager to be married, but when Jack had broached the idea at the start of the year, she\u2019d felt her heart leap at the prospect of another achievement. Then she\u2019d felt ashamed. Eight months later, on a holiday that would have been the perfect setting for the proposal that she\u2019d been led to expect, her shame was approaching mortification.<\/p>\n<p>The noise of the engine eventually broke the silence that followed, as Scott moved to head off the approaching squall, a low lilac curtain against the bright sun.\u00a0 \u201cIllegal,\u201d he called out from the back. \u201cNo, no, no. I\u2019m here for three days and you can table this for after I leave.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Breakfast had been tense. Over the buffet Lola had bound Scott up in smiling questions about the kitchen renovations he was having done back home. She had ladled congee into her bowl with a force that had flecked the table, dragon fruit the unreal pink of phenolphthalein in acid, while Jack had tried to mime \u2018scrambled eggs\u2019 in a language that he didn\u2019t speak, aware of how stupid he looked as he acted out the eggshell cracking against the table, desperate for Lola to intervene. Eventually, the waiter brought the cook out from the kitchen. Only then, once an unholy halo of white around each of Jack\u2019s pupils had appeared, the kind of white that means a cloud is bearing snow, had Lola deigned to acknowledge him, even if she hadn\u2019t looked at him as she\u2019d spoken. \u201cDid you need me?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Back on the water, Scott changed the subject. \u201cDid you see the TV earlier? Another beaching in the Canaries. Pilot whales.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The small boat rocked in a warm flutter of wind fat with roasting meat from the beach.\u00a0 The couple ignored their friend.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat must be the buoy for the wreck.\u201d Jack pointed to two four-pint milk cartons bobbing a short distance away. On the far side another not-quite-insect boat was at anchor. Its dark-skinned captain sat impassive, observing the swimmers below.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s sadder than the killer whales,\u201d continued Scott, ignoring Jack\u2019s comment as Jack had ignored his. \u201cAt least they\u2019re fighting back. Not that we\u2019re in whale country now. Friendly critters only. Fingers crossed.\u201d He laughed to himself.<\/p>\n<p>They nosed a little closer to the buoy, then Scott killed the engine again. Lola had covered herself in another slick of sunscreen and pulled on her goggles, luminous and ready to jump into the water. But Scott\u2019s mirth had punctuated her mood, and something had begun to seep out. Seeing an opportunity to take herself out of a low place and up onto a familiar righteous pedestal, she snapped at them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI actually think it\u2019s bullshit, all the discourse about how the orcas are ramming boats to stop us destroying their habitats. That\u2019s just another one of those messed up bedtime stories we like to tell ourselves so that we don\u2019t have to take responsibility for fucking the climate.\u201d Lola pushed her hair back from her face, catching a tangle on the small pearl she wore on her index finger.\u00a0 The annoyance seemed to spur her on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we anthropomorphise enough then we can trust that nature will eventually save itself and we can keep living the way we do in the meantime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Neither of the men rose to the rhetorical flourish. They kept their eyes on the eddies in the water.<\/p>\n<p>They were right up close to the buoy now, as close to on top of the wreck as they could be.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s pointless, isn\u2019t it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A hot breath of dripping fat turned their stomachs again.<\/p>\n<p>Jack clung silently to the stabiliser. Scott cast his eyes heavenwards, crossed himself, and then bit. \u201cWhat\u2019s pointless?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUs, here. It\u2019s worse than a joke. Flying halfway round the world to see a reef that\u2019s dying because people keep flying halfway round the world to see it. You, Jack, constantly on about a granddad you\u2019ve never met to justify the time we spend on expensive holidays like this. Getting in touch with your roots.\u201d That look played again on the corners of her mouth; she turned his name like a sommelier would an overpriced wine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd wasn\u2019t he from Antigua, your granddad, a fisherman? Isn\u2019t the coastline there disappearing? But you\u2019ll just take the whimsy bit, your seafaring heritage, the earrings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jack\u2019s eyes were wide again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLola do you have sunstroke? You\u2019re being vile.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMiddle-class diaspora kid on a boat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lola\u2019s voice was low and curt, as if she wanted to take back what she was saying as she said it, but was too stubborn to change course. The dead finality of her tone fell hard on Jack. He took this as his cue to start wallowing. He felt a counterfeit joy as he pulled on the familiar robe: she was mean, he was helpless, and that meant that he was innocent, even if, with his reticence about the proposal, he\u2019d hurt her first.<\/p>\n<p>The duellers heard a deep glug, then a gentle pepper of droplets against the deck, as Scott piked into the water with a small anchor in his arms. Once it was down, he surfaced again to retrieve his mask and his fins and cut an elegant front crawl away from them.<\/p>\n<p>Lola tipped herself backwards off the boat and made an unhappy starfish, frowning into the sky. Realising that she didn\u2019t have any more venom for him, Jack let go of the stabiliser and swam after his friend.<\/p>\n<p>The wreck was twenty feet or so deep, on the edge of a shelf that gave way to a forbidding night-sky blue. A sunken US Army vessel, it seemed to retreat in the already rising tide, enmeshed with a mound of corals that were fungal and psychedelic nearest the edge of the shelf. They were trippy not only in their colours but in their alien shapes: bulbous spheres, floral, tree-like growths, flat feathered constellations like magnified mosses. A grey outcrop closer to the shore was dying.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4804\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4804\" data-attachment-id=\"4804\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/seasnake-sand-dollar\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/seasnake-sand-dollar.jpg?fit=640%2C795&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"640,795\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1556479849","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}\" data-image-title=\"\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"<p>Photo: Nadia Huggins <\/p>\n\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/seasnake-sand-dollar.jpg?fit=640%2C795&ssl=1\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4804\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/seasnake-sand-dollar.jpg?resize=640%2C795&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"795\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/seasnake-sand-dollar.jpg?w=640&ssl=1 640w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/seasnake-sand-dollar.jpg?resize=600%2C745&ssl=1 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4804\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Nadia Huggins<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A shoal of pompano flickered underneath them, reflecting barbs of sunlight into their eyes. The shining fish looked dirty at the edges, pulled through a gutter, forked tails the colour of bile. Lola swam up alongside the men, gesturing to a gaudy moray eel. It powered in and out of the windows of the wreck with the nonchalance of a true predator, scattering smaller fish in fright. As they watched the eel move through the water, they saw something flat and muddy with the shape of a ray or a skate tossing sand at the seabed, nearer the shore.<\/p>\n<p>The group from the other boat was close by, all of them beating hard against the current, which was trying to pull them out and east. The trio watched them sink slowly in their diving gear, then separated.<\/p>\n<p>Lola headed for an orange patch of coral that called out like a beacon. Behind her, in the direction of their boat, Scott stalked a triangular fish with a pointed beak. Jack stayed back a short while to follow the slow-motion dance of the divers, regretting that he couldn\u2019t reach their depth.<\/p>\n<p>They each made a lonely circumnavigation of the sunken vessel, awkward against the lithe glitter of the fish, pausing limp whenever they were tired.<\/p>\n<p>As they regrouped close to their starting point, Scott caught a quiet signal in Jack\u2019s eye, and after a deep breath dove towards the remnants of the deck, furred with algae, still metres below. A handful of thumb-sized creatures flashed blue and green around his fins, hopeful that he might have something for them.<\/p>\n<p>Jack watched his friend descend, then he steeled himself, pulled his goggles into his hair, and tapped Lola on the shoulder. His throat grew tight as she shook her head and swam away from him. He hesitated, then dove after Scott, and she let the current take her, feeling like she could swim forever. As the pull took her towards the divers\u2019 boat, the captain beckoned her closer, gesturing that there was something to see.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat is it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust look.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lola took hold of the boat\u2019s rim and then submerged her head, scanning through the spectral motes that had begun to cloud the sea from below. They met the bright knives of the sun in bursting columns of light.<\/p>\n<p>She gave a scream which was swallowed by her mouthpiece and pulled her feet towards her chest. Still metres and metres away, down in the forbidden night blue, a distant shape, serrated tail and jagged fins. Unmistakably a shark. She looked to the captain through the fog of her goggles and quickly grew indignant. His broad stomach and smile shook gently above her. The man was consumed by giggles.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook at the mouth,\u201d he tried to reassure her. \u201cIt\u2019s a basking shark. The only kind we get here. A friend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lola dipped her head again, but the gold wind had grown strong just in the brief time that she and the captain had been speaking, and the shark was lost to view. She turned to him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThanks. I think we need to go.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She put two fingers into her mouth and whistled until Scott looked towards her. He made a signal that asked if they should leave.<\/p>\n<p>Lola shouted back. \u201cYes, but get me from here? The current.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The men worked their way back to where they were anchored, then into the horizon, towards her. They were there in a minute, and she dropped her flippers into the boat first, then used the stabilising plank to clamber into its belly.<\/p>\n<p>Once Lola was seated, in the noise of the engine, Jack turned on his bench at the front to face her, and tested.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI loved that eel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lola looked at him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know you\u2019re disappointed. It felt like too much and I just wanted to be in it, with you, here, not thinking about what\u2019s next. I can\u2019t \u2013 I don\u2019t know how to think about the future with\u2026everything. The news.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lola waited.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t you ever feel like it will disappear if you treat it like it\u2019s real?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJack that\u2019s called avoidance. You\u2019re not a unicorn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd I wish you wouldn\u2019t speak about my granddad the way you did earlier.\u201d He couldn\u2019t find his words, choked a sob at being unable to reach her.<\/p>\n<p>Lola looked at him coldly. \u201cI\u2019m not wrong though, am I?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In that moment Jack hated her in that way we can hate only our families, she was so slick around him in his skull that he could not breathe and he wanted her away.<\/p>\n<p>Scott pressed the boat forward, through the rising swell, towards the colours of the resort on the beach. Again, charred meat on the wind.<\/p>\n<p>And out of their wake, a needlefish arced, pellucid in the deepening the sky.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tGracie Mae Bradley is a British writer and strategist with heritage spanning the Midlands, Antigua, the Gambia and Philadelphia. She is co-author of Against Borders (Verso 2022), and her fiction and critical works have been published by Salvage, The Guardian, Skin Deep, The Independent, Vice, Valiz and more. Her short story With Hope, Without Hope, Absolutely was longlisted for the 2026 Disquiet Prize. She is a James McCune Smith Scholar and DFA candidate for Creative Writing at Glasgow University, and holds degrees from the LSE and Oxford University.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since their days in Paris, Jack and Lola had settled for corporate roles that afforded them all the hallmarks of millennial success. The freehold in Zone Two that they\u2019d upgrade when her inheritance came in; the luxury of planning for children without worrying about the cost of a nanny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":4804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1747,728594612,728594591],"tags":[728594619],"class_list":["post-11640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-gracie-mae-bradley","category-pree-15","tag-pree-15","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>EYE - PREE<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"EYE - PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Since their days in Paris, Jack and Lola had settled for corporate roles that afforded them all the hallmarks of millennial success. 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The freehold in Zone Two that they\u2019d upgrade when her inheritance came in; the luxury of planning for children without worrying about the cost of a nanny.","og_url":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/","og_site_name":"PREE","article_published_time":"2026-08-19T13:22:32+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-08-27T13:40:07+00:00","og_image":[{"width":640,"height":795,"url":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/seasnake-sand-dollar.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"ap","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"ap","Estimated reading time":"13 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/"},"author":{"name":"ap","@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/#\/schema\/person\/4518f338ddbd9b8905be3abd07c656f1"},"headline":"EYE","datePublished":"2026-08-19T13:22:32+00:00","dateModified":"2026-08-27T13:40:07+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/"},"wordCount":2844,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/seasnake-sand-dollar.jpg?fit=640%2C795&ssl=1","keywords":["PREE 15"],"articleSection":["Fiction","GRACIE MAE BRADLEY","PREE 15"],"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/","url":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/","name":"EYE - PREE","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/seasnake-sand-dollar.jpg?fit=640%2C795&ssl=1","datePublished":"2026-08-19T13:22:32+00:00","dateModified":"2026-08-27T13:40:07+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/seasnake-sand-dollar.jpg?fit=640%2C795&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/seasnake-sand-dollar.jpg?fit=640%2C795&ssl=1","width":640,"height":795,"caption":"Photo: Nadia Huggins"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/eye\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"EYE"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/","name":"PREE","description":"Caribbean. 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So big and burly that its branches could shelter a thousand oxen. Wide as a hill, the trunk of this thing. Warped like a funhouse mirror. The carpenter\u2019s apprentices ask him how come he dont stop, take a minute to admire the oak. It deserve a minute of the day just for the trouble to get so big, they say. The carpenter spat out, the only reason it\u2019s so big is cause the wood is useless. All knotted and gnarled and full of worms and termites. Aint have a damn thing that timber could construct. Not a boat, not a door, not a coffin. Its sap worth no more than a splash of old wash-water.<\/p>\n<p>Night falls and the carpenter has a dream. The tree comes to him. It speaks and tells him about all the other trees in the forest. How theys all split and slash down the moment they prove handy to mankind. All cut to lumber, cork, pulp, latex and firewood. Plant or beast or fish or fowl, anything that is within function, and that which is in reach of man will meet a terrible fate.<\/p>\n<p>I am honoured to serve no use to man or his mischief, the oak concludes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p>When I was seven, somethin bad happen with my eyes. A sensation like little stones got trap behind the lids. Every morning I\u2019d wake with them stinging, as if I pass the night in the trail of some dust devil. Didnt tell my mother or grampa. Couple boys at school started callin me Toad, how my eyes would puff up by recess. For a week, I come up with ways to hide it from the teacher. Kept my face bury in a book. Pretended to copy my notes slow so my head would be down most of the time. Faked headaches, gave myself headaches. The light hurt. The wind hurt. The teacher finally accuse me of sleepin during a lesson and call in my mother. Only then was I pressed to admit something was wrong.<\/p>\n<p>In the office, we had a long wait. There was a TV on the wall, so high you had to crane your neck to see. Volume turned all the way down. They was interviewing a white woman. Her stringy dishwater blonde hair nearly covering her eyes. Sleeves rolled to the elbow, hands out of frame. She was sobbing, and the captions noted so in little square brackets as if you couldnt see it yourself. She faded to black and from the black burst the flash of a American fireball. Raising the Pacific above the dawn. Text on the footer: Operation Castle. A bomb. And some hundred-or-so miles downwind from the blast was a island. Another footer: Rongelap Atoll, Marshall Islands. The island folk watched white powder drift from the sky. Glittering like frost in the mornin, settling on breadfruit leaves. The young ones played in it. Some tasted it.<\/p>\n<p>Within hours, they began to blister.<\/p>\n<p>By nightfall, hair was coming out in wet handfuls.<\/p>\n<p>A man on the screen now. Grey. A pin of the old Stars and Stripes on his collar. War historian. Talkin bout how scientists wait two days to ferry the people away to doctors. And the doctors took blood, took urine, took grafts, whatever they had to do to get the data. A few years passed. The island was declared safe and the displaced families was ferry back to their homes in Rongelap. War historian back on now, a chuckle sideways out the mouth. That bomb, he said, ended many wars before they could even think to begin. Then they put on this smiling seer man. Paint on his face. He beat a wood drum and offered thanks that his people could serve the world.<\/p>\n<p>The sad woman returned. Talkin bout the bomb. Said this type of bomb gatling-guns out millions of invisible bullets. Shootin all directions for hundreds, maybe thousands of years and cuttin through skin and bone. Making babies be borned boneless, hearts visible through the surface. Jellyfish, was the word the woman used. Jellyfish babies. Crying without voices because their heads and throats was never going to be formed proper.<\/p>\n<p>I gaze around the waiting room. My mother deep in the newspaper, her tongue on the corner of her mouth. A woman sitting opposite was doing a crossword. Her son, three or four, making engine noises with a toy car. Receptionist on the phone. Assistant scribblin something down. Nobody else was seein what I was seein, friend. Down the corridor was a sign that read RADIOLOGY. All goddamn capitals. And that word \u2014 RADIATION \u2014 kept flashin in the captions. My child’s mind could comprehend that the two was related. My eyes hot like volcanoes now. I started tugging at my mother’s dress with one hand, asking to leave, rubbing my eyes with the other, asking, We have to stay? We have to stay? My mother hold me close.<\/p>\n<p>Cant remember if I was really crying or not.<\/p>\n<p>What happen in the Pacific, I thought was goin to happen here, friend. I thought, that very day, a fireball would fall on the Caribbean Federation and I would die. My mother and gramma and grampa would turn to mush. Up till that day, I thought death was somethin that only happen to old people. And bad people. When we got home, I run to my room. When it was time for dinner, my mother found me under the bed. She pull me out and hugged me. I search her face for the terror I was feelin. But in her eyes was peace and goodness.<\/p>\n<p>Some twenty five years later \u2014 the Director-General of the Alliance of Free Nations would don a blue suit and high heels and go live across the world. No flags crowding the frame. She\u2019d go up on that dais, with that same expression of my mother. Soft round the mouth. I\u2019d be small again, becoming helpless, wide-eyed, lookin up at her. I\u2019d almost be able to picture this woman in a ibis print apron and old mitts, taking muffins out the oven. And I\u2019d figure there\u2019d still be some chance. Some good news, friend. This would be her words to the world:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p><em>I speak to you today as someone who wakes up to the same sun as you. I speak as a mother, a daughter, a sister, a wife. A member of the human race, the Anthropocene. For the past 5 years, our best scientists, sharing studies across borders, have been carefully observing converging sets of data and gradually coming to an undeniable consensus. The conditions that sustain complex life on Earth are deteriorating beyond our ability to reverse them. Yes, our journey on Earth is coming to an end. We cannot yet ascertain a definite length of this final chapter \u2014 it may be years, it may be decades \u2014 but the endpoint remains clear. Models have predicted that when we no longer see birds in the sky \u2014 from starlings and sparrows, to the mighty albatross and the migratory mallards \u2014 we will know we are in the final pages of our story. But another tale can begin in the skies and the stars. And because of that, the Alliance of Free Nations has established the WCC. The World Continuity Council.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p>And it would settle on we sorry folk that humanity could only persist with ones like you, friend. New child of the final frontier. A star sailor of the Afterstay. Whether picked or propagated there. Nobody still wouldnt be sure what exactly and truly a Afterstay is. Some kinda jumbo rocket? A fleet of em? Floating city? Somethin big enough to hold a sample of sapience out of reach from certain annihilation. The Director-General would give word that selection shall be done with care. The future aint going to belong to any one people. But to a long dialogue between science and history.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019d lean forward, brush her hair back. That tender glimmer in her eyes would be gone now. Replaced by a half-light callin forth this woman\u2019s upbringing, so unfamiliar to mine and most of the planet. Borned in Britannia but grown up around airports and embassies. A upbringing amongst security checkpoints. Where you aint never quite belong anywhere. Groomed to be suited for the public eye. Probably never had to pray to God till now.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p><em>The WCC has already partnered with private aerospace, energy companies, artificial intelligence and large data firms, and astronautics companies and firms to commence resource acquisition and phased construction of the Afterstay project. This process shall begin on Earth, though we are also looking forward to in-orbit assembly. In parallel, Heads of State will be tasked with the preliminary screening of candidates. These recommendations will be guided by a framework developed by international panels of physicians, engineers, and behavioural scientists. Some of the selection parameters will include metabolic efficiency, reproductive viability, cardiovascular resilience, and the absence of heritable conditions likely to compromise survival. These measures, I assure you, are not instruments of segregation or discrimination. Instead, they reflect our known constraints of factors such as radiation exposure and inhabiting a closed ecological system for long durations. The Afterstay, we already know, will not be a sanctuary. It will not be easy for the candidates aboard.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>All candidates will undergo a secondary screening by our panels, and those approved will enter structured training cohorts, conducted in successive batches. We ask participating nations to adhere to these protocols. Those who wish their histories, languages and cultures to persist must understand that only the fittest will survive in the time of Continuity. If a nation does not select its best, that nation and humanity on-board will be compromised. Pretending otherwise would condemn the future of humanity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p>A pause. Blood hammering her throat now, could see it plain as day. That morning, she might have took her coffee standing up. Took a shower without hurry. Some cities not yet awake. Ruminated on promotions and how each rung there was less and less friends, jokes. And everything that made her. And how the title Director-General wouldnt matter anymore.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p><em>I, myself, will not occupy a berth on the Afterstay. I am ineligible. So is my husband and my child. Survival, at scale, will not be possible. I am contented to accept an Earth-death. Many of you will have to make peace with a similar fate. I ask those of you without berths, like me, to dream of a time we will never see. Imagine faces we will never know. Throughout time, we have planted trees of fruit we will never eat. We can love a world that extends beyond our own brief moment in it. We can show it the fires of our zeal, or the ice of our despair. Let us contribute our labour, our passion, our expertise to work toward a future greater than our own. We have all become part of perhaps the most important generation to have ever lived on this planet. Please, I urge you \u2014 let us be in the interest of Continuity. <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p>Continuity. Proper noun. Like Reconstruction. Revelation. We wouldnt all be heading toward that same future. I\u2019d be in the supermarket when I find out the world is a write-off. Comparing prices of peanut butter and realising I forgot to scrub my eyes that mornin. Nowhere in the Director\u2019s speech would there be talk bout fixing what broke. All that brilliance and computing power, atom-splittin, bomb-blastin. Standing on the shoulders of Galileo and Darwin and Curie and Marconi, reaching higher, seein further. Just stars fallin into the dark sea.<\/p>\n<p>A week later, a leak would emerge. A internal memo putting a number to this small sample of humanity \u2014 3,000. The number of berths on the Afterstay. Black and white. A table with nations in one column, allocations on the next. No reasoning, nothin like that.<\/p>\n<p>The American Reach would be budgeted 1,800 spaces.<\/p>\n<p>More than double that of the Schengen, Britannia, and Hindustan combined.<\/p>\n<p>Farther south and the numbers plummet to double digit. The Austral Zone would be projected 60. A dozen for the Maghreb and the New Andes.<\/p>\n<p>The Marshallese and the entirety of the Pacific Island Union would get 2. One for Adam, one for Eve. Lowest in the globe. Our archipelago wouldnt be far off, with 7.<\/p>\n<p>The WCC would put out a press release after that, saying them numbers floatin round was only projections, just one sketch of many possible outcomes. One of many futures. One premise, one hypothesis. Every choice, they\u2019d promise, would be made strictly in the interest of Continuity.<\/p>\n<p>The very next day, they would announce the Omoikane and the Umwelt.<\/p>\n<p>The Om and the Um.<\/p>\n<p>Both to be launched alongside the Afterstay.<\/p>\n<p>The Om would be the planet\u2019s cultural brain. Is how the WCC describe it. A first committee of cultural ministers, academics and scientists appointed a second of museum curators, literary fellows, film directors and more scientists, which then all got to arranging their own sub-committees. Someone who spent their whole life studying cave paintings at Cueva de Las Manos now worrying if handprints deserve a place in the stars. Absurd kind of power, to decide its future. What gets to be remembered? Translation collectives, Japanese animation houses, neo-classical opera boards and Aboriginal heritage trusts. Bats pouring out of the collapsing cave.<\/p>\n<p>The Umwelt had a separate unveiling. No scientist for this one. This time, was a writer from Hanguk. She was striking, graceful. Hair cut straight to the jaw, streaked with white. They put her in a white room with a wooden desk and chair. On the desk was a notebook. She wrote, hands narrow and careful, and spoke about the shame of not being enough for her parents. About falling in love with a friend, sitting on the floor of his apartment. And how it was all over one snowy morning. She looked up. This is what the Umwelt is for. We form our own committee for our emotions and memories.<\/p>\n<p>With a smile, she admitted she will die a Earth-death like so many of us. And she looked forward to contributing to the human record. Everyone was invited to do the same. Drawings. Writings. Songs. Video, audio. Submit something you made, she said. Something that proves you existed.<\/p>\n<p>On the website is a countdown clock. <em>7 months, 3 days, and so-and-so hours, minutes and so-and-so seconds remaining. <\/em>No date announced yet for the Afterstay launch, but everyone figure it wont be long after this hit zero. There is a checklist you click through until the button finally turns green and lets you through. No limits and no rules about what kind of file, which is weird to me. I cant imagine thinkin humans in some ministry bunker would be involved in sifting through petabytes of data.<\/p>\n<p>But I aint stupid. It occur to me it\u2019s possible none of this goin anywhere at all. This whole damn thing could just be busywork. Give people something to make so the making fills the space where another worse thing would otherwise sit. Could be a trick. An illusion. Me, I choose to believe. But I also cant imagine them sparing that much processing power to automate it. Dont know how this gonna work out. They gonna pull out the worst of it? The illegal things. The dangerous things. Revenge porn. Rape videos. Child videos. Bomb recipes. Spam. Snuff. Somebody taking apart a cat and insisting this too must be remembered.<\/p>\n<p>Who to say what shouldnt? A two-stanza poem about flowers by a hijabed child in Maghreb, or the magnum opus of a bipolar man from West Schengen. A kind of arrogance to think you should be remembered in the first place. Most people who ever been on this planet lived and was folded back into the ground, and the world move right on without needing a name. You cant expect eternity. The future never owe us nothin. A season or two of local discussion, maybe. If you really think bout it, preservation is a historical anomaly, not a natural right. Though, still, we daydream of Alexandria. Of time travel. Spend a day with our ancestors and hear the songs they had sung to children. Spend another in Prehistory and see the ground shaped by the footprints of the Tyrannosaurus. Is we your cavemen, friend? We, fossils. We, lumbering and desperate Earthlings?<\/p>\n<p>I suppose there is a vast ocean between your understanding and mine \u2014 and even usin that word ocean might seem a strange point of reference for you up there. I always known nothin can exist by itself. Every object drag a lineage behind it and when you learn bout somethin, you dont realise at first you learn in this world by triangulation. This like that, that unlike the other. Ocean is like big lake, and unlike a mountain. Rain is like ocean reaching down one drop at a time. Horizon is where ocean meet sky.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"11421\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/17\/continuity\/pebble-image\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/pebble-image.jpg?fit=1906%2C1865&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1906,1865\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"1.8","credit":"","camera":"iPhone X","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1616833439","copyright":"","focal_length":"4","iso":"20","shutter_speed":"0.0016260162601626","title":"","orientation":"1","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"pebble image\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/pebble-image.jpg?fit=1024%2C1002&ssl=1\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-11421\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/pebble-image.jpg?resize=1024%2C1002&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1002\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/pebble-image.jpg?resize=1024%2C1002&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/pebble-image.jpg?resize=300%2C294&ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/pebble-image.jpg?resize=768%2C751&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/pebble-image.jpg?resize=1536%2C1503&ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/pebble-image.jpg?resize=1080%2C1057&ssl=1 1080w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/pebble-image.jpg?resize=600%2C587&ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/pebble-image.jpg?resize=50%2C50&ssl=1 50w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/pebble-image.jpg?w=1906&ssl=1 1906w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>You probably never seen the rain. Never smelled it.<\/p>\n<p>But if somebody tell you a story about how they stand in the rain, getting wet, gettin sick, gazing out for that someone that suddenly left and they couldnt follow, I wager you will feel something. Even if that something is the lack. You take the old stories and feel somethin you aint felt in a long time. Or perhaps never felt before. I like thinking you\u2019ll be out there hearing me one day, friend. My voice in this audio file being bunked somewhere up there on one of em brace-ships.<\/p>\n<p>And if it dont happen, well, that\u2019s all right. Worst case, the files sit on some server that dies with the last transformer, and sinks into the deep darkness. Words travel on or they rest. No pain to it.<\/p>\n<p>A week later, they would announce the Gene Pool Initiative \u2014 if you couldnt haul your whole self up there, at least your DNA could get lucky. Male donations only for the first batch, we would learn. Then eggs. Then embryos. Women would have a name for a gent with a helix in the mix: Poolboy. One of em Poolboys may even be your papa, friend. I was thinking maybe me too. Even though I smoke too much. But it was never gonna go nowhere after another leak:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<h5><em>Subject: Caribbean Federation \/ GPI Status<\/em><\/h5>\n<h5><em>Classification: Internal \/ Non-Public<\/em><\/h5>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p><em>Following review of the Caribbean Federation submission under the current Afterstay Gene Pool Initiative intake window, we would like staff to confirm if the jurisdiction does not meet eligibility thresholds for this phase. The following has been ascertained about this nation:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Limited confidence in multi-generational morbidity modelling<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Insufficient cryogenic handling, storage, and chain-of-custody infrastructure<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Non-alignment with digital and regulatory frameworks <\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>These criteria are mandatory and have been applied consistently across all participating nations. Re-evaluation may be conducted only if material conditions change prior to final departure, subject to resource availability and scheduling constraints. No provisional allocation has been yet reserved. We are still awaiting advice from relevant departments. To avoid a negative outcome, it may be recommended we still carry out the Gamete Collection phase of the program in this nation, and forego the Storage phase. In such a case, biological materials should be disposed safely and discreetly.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p>By this point, dont think nobody was keeping any hopes up with the WCC.<\/p>\n<p>Doesnt stop people being curious bout you, friend. Who you gonna be. You and your neighbours up there. How much of you gonna be edited and titivated. More human than human. They would do blueprints of that viewport you use to see the stars. Rotating hab rings. Massive hydroponic garden that feed you and your family. Wings of PV cells to drink the sun. It is unfathomable, the work that would be planned.<\/p>\n<p>The American Reach with its data centres and server farms the size of small towns, runnin all sorts of calculations and simulations. New Greenland would become a scar of tundra from being dredged for rare metals. The beautiful mountains of the Sino-Balkans stripped for lithium. Machines and people on overdrive. Some of these companies in the cupboard \u2014 Unilever, Nestl\u00e9, PepsiCo, Whirlpool, Energizer, Pfizer, Bayer, Mondelez, Haleon, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, SC Johnson \u2014 now more important than some whole nations.<\/p>\n<p>Every big and fructiferous nation run into the ground trying to get everything off the ground. To the skies, to the stars. Some leaders would get to using policy and dogma and might get folk to work triple shifts. In some churches in the Reach, workin to death would be sermon and scripture. Go to the ant; consider its ways and be wise! Then there\u2019d be nations like the Chinese Dominion, All-Russia, Greater Levant \u2014 rumoured to be building their own Afterstay.<\/p>\n<p>The greatest madness is yet to come upon this world, friend.<\/p>\n<p>In Tamil Nadu, a bloc of senior engineers would vote to move their families into the perimeter housing of a mothballed fission plant. The only way they could keep seein em. The plant would explode, kill everyone on the compound. The next day, someone dons a Hazmat hood on a statue of Shiva. A week after, the lead biologist of the Afterstay \u2014 who won a Nobel for her work on cellular aging \u2014 would hang herself in her office in East Schengen. Her suicide note would leak:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Nebus kam mums atleisti.<br \/>\n<\/em><em>(There will be no one left to forgive us.)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The WCC would release a statement within hours. In it, they call her a brilliant mind. A memorial service would be announced and flags would be at half-mast for three days across all Alliance buildings. No mention of the note. The WCC\u2019s official position would remain that the cause of death was still under investigation and speculation would be disrespectful to her memory. The next day, a fire at a server farm in Houston would kill over 250 people. The work must continue, the Director-General would personally come on to say. Honour the fallen by completing what was started.<\/p>\n<p>That future is in the skies.<\/p>\n<p>Worth being killed for. Worth killing yourself for.<\/p>\n<p>Friend, recall the oak.<\/p>\n<p>On this nation archipelago, there was never no heavy industry to retool. No rare deposits to extract. Nothin but flying fish, coconuts, yams and bleached coral. But in all of that, still peace and goodness. This island grid still up sixteen hours a day. No work quotas stapled to the passports here. No riots and fires and sirens and countdowns. While the rest of the world is being disseminated, this archipelago remains intact for the dullest reason imaginable: no one has any use for us. There is no space left in the story of the wider world. The kiskadees are still singing.<\/p>\n<p>Took a drive north-east today. Toco Beach. Used to be you could journey up there on a Tuesday morning and hope to find the place quiet. Just you and the magnificent frigate-birds. You could lean into the sound of the tide. Something bout ocean waves, difficult to describe. A calmness to em, how they was here before humanity. Maybe you have recordings up there, friend. Or a rec room with holograms of sand and surf. Waves come and come again, knowing another is right behind. Couldnt barely hear em today. Few months now, you cant find a place to park half-mile up the coast. Cars like a pilgrimage. Crowds and rubbish. Half a dozen basslines fighting for the same air. Is how it is now.<\/p>\n<p>Everywhere the same. Maracas, Blanchisseuse, Granville, Mayaro.<\/p>\n<p>Full of people and music and food. My eyes hurt when I see it. Some days, I dont treat them. I leave them red and runny. And sometimes I wonder if I am just trying to give myself headaches again, like back when I was in school. All of this bacchanalia will soon pass, I think, and we will realise how we\u2019ve all gotten very tired down here, friend.<\/p>\n<p>I want to say it out loud, right here, right now. It is because of this weariness and uselessness, I dont feel afraid stating the imminent:<\/p>\n<p>If you do hear this, I was killed in the collapse. I am dead.<\/p>\n<p>I was not hiding under the bed.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tKevin Jared Hosein is the author of three novels and numerous short stories. Among his accolades are the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His work has also been in contention for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. He has been published in numerous anthologies and outlets, including Esquire, Wasafiri, Lightspeed, Granta, BBC Radio 4 and Perspective. He lives in Trinidad and Tobago. His upcoming novel, Second Lives, comes out in Spring 2027.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A kind of arrogance to think you should be remembered in the first place. Most people who ever been on this planet lived and was folded back into the ground, and the world move right on without needing a name. You cant expect eternity. The future never owe us nothin. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":11421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1747,728594607,728594591,728594599],"tags":[728594619],"class_list":["post-11572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-kevin-jared-hosein","category-pree-15","category-shortlisted","tag-pree-15","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Continuity - PREE<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/17\/continuity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Continuity - PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A kind of arrogance to think you should be remembered in the first place. 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a Mother Load"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CORRINE BINNINGS<\/p>\n<p>It seems my mother has always been young<br \/>\nvibrant, and strong willed<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">threatening to dash piss<br \/>\non the neighborhood bully who skipped<br \/>\nus in line at the standpipe<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">promising to chop up the nasty<br \/>\nrasta man who smiled too long at us<br \/>\non his way through our community<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">playing dandy shandy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 snakes and ladders<br \/>\nwagering peanuts in weekend card games<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">finding a dollar where none was planted<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">making a way out of overgrown situations<\/p>\n<p>Now at 70\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 she is the image of my deceased grandmother<br \/>\nmouth mashed like fritters without false teeth<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">hands clumsy and feet unsteady<br \/>\nshoulders drooping lower\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 hurting<br \/>\nharder\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 carrying forgotten memories<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">dependent on me to tie her lace<br \/>\nstraighten her collar\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 plait thinning<br \/>\nhair\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 carry her heaviest loads<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">hold her hand up the stairs<br \/>\ndown the stairs<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">make her tea<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">dish her daily doses of patience and grace<\/p>\n<p>now that I am her mother\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I struggle to carry<br \/>\nmy world and my mother together<br \/>\nlike she carried me<br \/>\nafraid and alone<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tCorrine is a Jamaican poet and teacher who has published both Poetry and Creative Nonfiction the Dark River Review, Brine, The Caribbean Writer, PREE Lit and BIM. She was winner of the National Library of Jamaica and the Jamaica Poet Laureate 2023 Louise Bennett-Coverley Prize for Poetry. She is currently working on publishing her first chapbook and full-length manuscript of poetry.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>now that I am her mother\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I struggle to carry<br \/>\nmy world and my mother together<br \/>\nlike she carried me<br \/>\nafraid and alone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[728593982,422,728594591],"tags":[728594619],"class_list":["post-11590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corinne-binnings","category-poetry","category-pree-15","tag-pree-15","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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She did it in the shadows, moon<br \/>\nfalling in the anguish of her dying marriage.<br \/>\nFor good measure, she saw an obeah man,<br \/>\nexposing her long untouched breasts,<br \/>\nshe stood trembling on the bathroom floor,<br \/>\nstepped into some muddy waters<br \/>\nof the bathtub, strapped a thin slice of pork<br \/>\nto her vagina. The jumbies screamed<br \/>\nin confusion. Trees bent, doubled by wind.<br \/>\nIn cold catholic communion next morning,<br \/>\nblack veiled, heart red with shame,<br \/>\nshe kept these burning stories hidden<br \/>\nin her heart, the way Mary hid the angels\u2019<br \/>\nmysterious and magic news of her son,<br \/>\nJesus.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tYvonne Weekes is an Arts educator, academic and award winning Montserratian writer whose research practices and activism utlise theatre and film making, poetry and performance. She currently resides in Barbados. \u00a0\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For good measure, she saw an obeah man,<br \/>\nexposing her long untouched breasts,<br \/>\nshe stood trembling on the bathroom floor,<br \/>\nstepped into some muddy waters<br \/>\nof the bathtub, strapped a thin slice of pork<br \/>\nto her vagina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[422,728594591,728594559],"tags":[728594619],"class_list":["post-11582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-pree-15","category-yvonne-weekes","tag-pree-15","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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Comrade; Behind Glassed Walls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NADJA ADORA NABBIE<\/p>\n<h3>Dear Comrade<\/h3>\n<p>Dear Comrade,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I am afraid<br \/>\nthe sovereignty of our imaginations<br \/>\nhas already been captured<br \/>\nlost to silver screens and static<br \/>\nbetrayed by our own inferior complexes<br \/>\nand too, I suppose, as you said,<br \/>\nthe need for survival.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">We traded our freedom for the familiar<br \/>\nunfamiliar<br \/>\nhand that reached out to grab us<br \/>\nseeing our own as crippled<br \/>\nincapable of building empires<br \/>\nthat could hold us<br \/>\nwe ran back to that which had been taught to us, as perfection<br \/>\nits gesture must have been one of affection<br \/>\nand our deformed hearts<br \/>\nwhich had been longing since for this touch beyond the reaches of our skin —<br \/>\nnow fulfilled —<br \/>\nturned against itself because<br \/>\nwe dwelled in the seething rage of our island homes<br \/>\nwishing to scrub our children clean of themselves<br \/>\nconspiring to un-make our art and re-fashion it<br \/>\ninto their likeness and image.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Let us admit, we would if we could<br \/>\nset cane fire to our histories<br \/>\nsilence our libraries<br \/>\nrupture our economies and<br \/>\nruin our people on command<br \/>\nif it pleased the engineering to do so.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">We have always desired the other<br \/>\nseen ourselves as other<br \/>\nwish to be anything other<br \/>\nthan ourselves:<br \/>\nWe, these Caliban creatures,<br \/>\nabandoned on islands<br \/>\ntrudging with our galvanized and wooden materials<br \/>\nthat could club these Prosperos to the ground<br \/>\nbuilding them instead pulpits<br \/>\nso they could Lord above us<br \/>\nas our Gods<br \/>\noffer us their words to pray:<br \/>\n<em>God bless us all in these Americas<br \/>\n<\/em>And hope because of proximity, that meant us too<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">but it\u2019s not our fault<br \/>\nwe fell for flashing things<br \/>\nmoney and mirrors<br \/>\nstars and stripes<br \/>\nwaving above us<br \/>\nfrom atop the waters —<br \/>\nwho wouldn\u2019t love what they were told to watch<br \/>\neven if it watched back<br \/>\nto plot against us<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">so we can forgive ourselves<br \/>\nfor this seduction.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Just know that it happened<br \/>\na long time ago<br \/>\nbut it never seemed so<br \/>\nbecause we were here<br \/>\nand they were there<br \/>\nand the separation by sea led us to believe<br \/>\nthe great lie we told ourselves:<br \/>\nThat we too, were the land of the free –<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">but now that they are here,<br \/>\nnow that they have come to our doorsteps<br \/>\nwith their warships and weapons,<br \/>\nwhat difference does it make?<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Come now<br \/>\nlet us not fret,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">their being here is merely a formality.<br \/>\nThey have come to collect their belongings.<\/p>\n<p>Signed<\/p>\n<p><em>your comrade in skin and beloved enemy<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>BEHIND GLASSED WALLS<\/h3>\n<p>For once, I want to know myself as\u00a0<em>you<\/em>\u00a0—<br \/>\ntall, glassed tower<br \/>\nwatchful and weightless.<br \/>\nSitting on an insulated throne of superiority<br \/>\ncommanding my calculating army, \u201cLay siege.\u201d<br \/>\nYour vulnerable city captured in a rabid cage of paranoia<br \/>\nhelpless — with shattered pieces pulsing<br \/>\nin the deafening squeal<br \/>\nof my microphone\u2019s feedback spitting<br \/>\n<em>nothing but silence <\/em>\u2013<br \/>\nwhile I parade myself in your costume of chaos,<br \/>\nsip from the glass of imbalance<br \/>\nfinally tipped towards me,<br \/>\nindulge in victory\u2019s liquid courage tantalizing<br \/>\nmy tongue turned wild<br \/>\nlapping the pleasure of your screams,<br \/>\n<em>\u201cHelp \u2013 please help \u2013\u201d\u00a0<\/em><br \/>\nbut I never listen.<br \/>\nMy eyes remain skyward<br \/>\nenjoying the scratches you pitifully attempt at my surfaces \u2013<br \/>\nsmooth and spotless,<br \/>\npolished to protect my indifference to your pain.<br \/>\nOffering me only an ethereal view of the valley of your despair.<br \/>\nThe sun blinds me to anything that isn\u2019t worthy of my attention.<\/p>\n<p>Except, when the light falls<br \/>\nmy walls turn to mirror<br \/>\nand the feral reflection of complicity reveals<br \/>\na sick truth \u2013<br \/>\nThat if I want to know myself as you<br \/>\nthen I must choose to become warped, misshapen and indistinguishable.<\/p>\n<p><em>Why would I want this?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Still I close my eyes \u2013<br \/>\nand trembling<\/p>\n<p>become your glass.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tNadja Adora Nabbie is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and a Masters in Creative and Critical Writing. She is the lead author of My Own SBA Toolkit for CSEC English A Examinations (2018), The Tease: a chapbook (2018), Travelling: a chapbook (2025) and Swamp Friends: A Friend in Need (2026). Her short stories have been published in Bookends, Intersect Anu, Caribbean Quarterly and The Black Writer\u2019s Toolbox (Bloomsbury Publishing). She has been longlisted by \u00c0rok\u00f2 Cooperative for the \u00c0rok\u00f2 Anthology: Folklore From Africa and the Diaspora. Two of her poems have been adapted into short films, and in 2020, she directed and produced the documentary A Bridge to Healing. Nabbie has taught Literature, Language and Creative Writing at all levels of the education system. She is a co-founder of The Write Space, a company that hosts creative writing events, retreats and workshops.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>but it\u2019s not our fault<br \/>\nwe fell for flashing things<br \/>\nmoney and mirrors<br \/>\nstars and stripes<br \/>\nwaving above us<br \/>\nfrom atop the waters —<br \/>\nwho wouldn\u2019t love what they were told to watch<br \/>\neven if it watched back<br \/>\nto plot against us<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[728594608,422,728594591],"tags":[728594619],"class_list":["post-11557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nadja-adora-nabbie","category-poetry","category-pree-15","tag-pree-15","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Dear Comrade; Behind Glassed Walls - PREE<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/15\/behind-glassed-walls\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dear Comrade; Behind Glassed Walls - PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"but it\u2019s not our fault we fell for flashing things money and mirrors stars and stripes waving above us from atop the waters -- who wouldn\u2019t love what they were told to watch even if it watched back to plot against us\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/15\/behind-glassed-walls\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-15T16:25:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-08-27T13:40:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"ap\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"ap\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/preelit.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/15\\\/behind-glassed-walls\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/preelit.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/15\\\/behind-glassed-walls\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"ap\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/preelit.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/4518f338ddbd9b8905be3abd07c656f1\"},\"headline\":\"Dear Comrade; 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You know right after you get a lick and go, twwaukk, yuh just start jump up. But the way the squirrel so disoriented it can\u2019t even get up, it just a jump and fall back down, and a get up and a fall back down and a tan up and a fall back down and it just a fall back down and everybody stop. The people dem weh a ride them bike and a run — \u00a0is Prospect Park me did deh \u2013 and the people dem weh a push stroller like me, dem stop and a seh, is what happen? The squirrel just, go twwaukk.<\/p>\n<p>After yuh get a lick like that you can’t just jump suh. A squirrel deh, musta did frighten. Me never know squirrel can fall from so far pon top a one tree and guh suh, twwaukk. No man, a squirrel deh frighten. Frighten it did frighten the way it hit the asphalt so, like one uhmm, like one uhmm heavy stick or tree branch. Me nuh believe seh a squirrel deh make it. No way, no how. Maybe maybe me nuh know bout dem bones or dem head but me nuh believe a squirrel deh make it, after it go so, twwaukk, pon the asphalt.<\/p>\n<p>No man, a squirrel deh, couldnt a, it couldnt a make it and me not even care fi squirrel, me just a seh how it happen so fast. And oh God, it so sad, so sad how it did a, did a jump up, and tan up, and couldnt get up, me think a dead it did a dead enuh, me think a dead it a dead and me did waan seh \u2013 Oh God somebody help it, help it please. But weh yuh a go do, cause a wild animal and the animal inna dem uhhm you know in dem environment.<\/p>\n<p>Me a walk home and the thought just deh wid me, a bother me, drop right in front me enuh, could a drop right pon top a the stroller. Me did so close, me cant believe, me did so frighten, the squirrel so frighten, it just a, just a try get up, just a try jump up and it so friggin sad oh things just happen so quick. Yuh haffi be careful man when yuh a climb tree, haffi be careful even when yuh a expert, cause squirrel anno anno tree climbing expert? Look oh the squirrel just fall out a the tree and just lick the asphalt suh, twwaukk, like one big tree branch.<\/p>\n<p>Weh yuh a go do? Carry the squirrel guh the vet, me nuh know, cause when yuh fall from way\u00a0 on top a one tree and yuh go so twwaukk. A fall like that in front a everybody suh\u00a0 and just a try get up and a tan up and fall back down and everybody a look, a expert guh so \u2014 twwaukk.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tDonauta Watson is a Jamaican-born poet, writer, performer, and arts administrator based in Brooklyn, New York. She often writes in Jamaican Patwa, using the language to explore the undocumented American experience and the intersections of identity, migration, and belonging. Her writing has appeared in The Yale Review, New Square, Misfit Sisters, PEN America’s Dreaming Out Loud Anthology (Volumes I\u2013III), Revista de la Universidad de M\u00e9xico, and Spoken Black Girl. She has performed her work at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Nuyorican Poets Caf\u00e9, and read at the PEN World Voices Festival. Watson holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from New York University’s MFA Program in Paris. She currently works in arts administration at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Look oh the squirrel just fall out a the tree and just lick the asphalt suh, twwaukk, like one big tree branch.<br \/>\nWeh yuh a go do? Carry the squirrel guh the vet, me nuh know, cause when yuh fall from way\u00a0 on top a one tree and yuh go so twwaukk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[728594605,422,728594591],"tags":[728594619],"class_list":["post-11554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donauta-watson","category-poetry","category-pree-15","tag-pree-15","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Squirrel that go so - PREE<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/15\/the-squirrel-that-go-so\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Squirrel that go so - PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Look oh the squirrel just fall out a the tree and just lick the asphalt suh, twwaukk, like one big tree branch. 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Body surfing helped her stay present. Once one wave was gone, she had to be ready for the backlash \u2014 the pull and push of the next one. To catch the wave, you have to jump in the right spot right before it crests. Too much behind it, you\u2019re passed over. Too far ahead, you\u2019re hit by its full force.<\/p>\n<p>She had been away from this water for a while. A Kingstonian, she traveled to Portland for the steady waves of Boston Beach. Over the past few years, as she worked in Nashville, she had watched the livestreams of Gaza\u2019s destruction, and seen ICE take over the streets and minds of immigrants like herself. Packed her passport in the pocket of her purse \u2014 something she was originally too afraid to do, she was now too afraid to do without. The truth is, from the time she arrived in the United States seventeen years ago, she had felt the fear and vulnerability of her visa status. The laws had always been on the side of not caring. Not seeing her as a full person, one who had to plan her life around the lack of America\u2019s promises.<\/p>\n<p>Ducking under the wave, the hiss and crash above is replaced by steady white noise as the water envelops you. It quieted her brain to be down there, in the muted expanse. You can feel the power of the wave as it passes above you, but under it you\u2019re held, surrounded by it, and protected from any direct hit.<\/p>\n<p>Back home now, she found herself under a wave, swept up in the chaos of figuring out a new life, but also held by the hum of the ocean. Her family, her friends from high school, her parents\u2019 friends, the nurse who worked at her prep school saying hi in the supermarket. They saw her and knew her in a way that Americans she had been around everyday did not. Could not. The familiarity that surrounded her held her steady. In America, you could easily be surprised. It was hard to always jump at the right time, and you could easily end up pushed over and smashed into the sand.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, even after you\u2019ve successfully caught a wave, you can get stuck spinning around near the shore. In the churn of the shoreline water, it can take a second to figure out the way up. The way to escape, her mother taught her, is to reduce panic, study the motion of the water, and trust yourself to find the surface.<\/p>\n<p>When she surfaced again between the swells at Boston Beach, her mind was swirling. She hated that she compared the two countries so much, preferring to forget that half her life had been spent in a version of herself tailored to fit in where she didn\u2019t belong. Her eyes were hazy from the high of her one spliff; it was supposed to keep her present, too. She pushed herself a little beyond where the wave crests fell and looked towards the sand, trying to ground herself again. For a second, she thought she saw him, but she wasn\u2019t sure. But then he called to her, \u201cRaina?! Das you I seeing? Is Joey!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Joey popping up in Portland was kinda crazy. It was about three years ago that she met him at Trinidad carnival, her in her elaborate wings and he in his shirt from his friend\u2019s brand. He was a fisherman by trade, and the dexterity of his fingers translated beyond tying line, she remembered that much. He looked a little older now, with a little less hair and a little more belly. Still beautiful. \u201cJoey?! After I\u2019m the Jamaican, nuh must be in my country. What you doing here?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They embraced, his skin water combining with hers and dripping from their arms, and he lingered a little bit longer than a friend, his hand a little lower on her waist than appropriate. She wondered how long he was staying.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust a lil visit inno, my sister now graduate from UWI. She a big doctor now yuh know- Zaidie. So I hadda check she.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCongrats to Zaidie! How you never tell me she was at UWI Joe?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell yuh know I didn\u2019t want to bother you, I figure if yuh stop answer my texts yuh didn\u2019t have time to look for she\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He smirked at her. That smile, that smile, that smile! It caught her at Carnival and was catching her now again. How long is he staying again? Ask him, girl.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJoey now you know I\u2019m bad at texting but no hard feelings yeah.. America was mashing me up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow it mash YOU up Raina, you cyah get mash up nah!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019d be surprised\u2026you want to hear for real? How much time you have?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday\u2026 some. I\u2019m staying by this lil place called Seacliff- yuh could take me back?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYea of course, I drove.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlright then, one second\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGeorgie!\u201d he called to the beach. \u201cGeorgie, this is Raina!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She waved politely at the friend as she walked closer to the shore. She remembered the first time she met Joey. How they spent two days straight together after she saw him on Carnival Tuesday. Was she about to do it again? I mean, she happened to be on a solo trip, but who knew his situation? Georgie walked up the sandbar, towards the parking lot, and Joey bounded back to her, energy bouncing off him as always.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYea girl, so tell me now\u2026 who I must beat for you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Laughing was easy with them, like the last time. She poured out her normal complaints about her life in the warmonger’s country. The isolation. The white people. The fear of being picked up and shipped to El Salvador. The feeling of being unknown, unconsidered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes the people who must see us, see us, yuh understand? Sometimes is better some people don\u2019t see us at all!\u201d He calmed her effortlessly. \u201cI\u2019m just glad you not dere anymore. But I see you back in Jamaica glowing, looking sweet as ever, yuh go figure it out soon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And she knew this, too. But Raina found it sweet how easily he got to the core of what she feared. Only a month in Jamaica had already proved to her that being around the people in her old life was grounding.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo how\u2019s the music going Joe, I soon hear you on a Private Ryan playlist or wa?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He grinned again, but his brows betrayed a little tension in his face. \u201cIt happening but slow\u2026 maybe 2027 for the playlist\u2026 but something coming. I just helping out my pops in the meantime, fishing. De other day we pull one out and it was bouncing everywhere, look like yuh bamcie on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Raina sighed, she forgot the corny part of Joey, but at least her answer was becoming more clear. She touched his leg, \u201cOh you still remembering my bamcie\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When they got to Seacliff a few hours later, Georgie had conveniently gone to dinner. The guys were sharing a room on the ground floor, and Joey held Raina\u2019s hand as he led her through to the back patio. The small hotel was perched on a sheer cliff, about one hundred feet up, overlooking the ocean. Dark blue sea spread as far as she looked, stretching all the way to the horizon to meet the soon-setting sun. The rumbling of waves hitting the cliffside was all-encompassing and constant, reminding her of the dull hum under the waves from this morning. But now, she was far above any need to duck, and could fully train her attention on the man next to her.<\/p>\n<p>Joey jumped into a hammock on his patio, lighting a spliff. He offered her a seat in his lap and a sip of the spliff. She accepted both, happy to create a new moment with one of the strongest connections she had ever had. A little afraid, but mostly just there, enveloped in the rumbling, not resurfacing. Really, she had only stopped answering his texts because the distance between Nashville and Port of Spain felt too hard for her to manage. Being so understood by a person thousands of miles away, and so misunderstood by the people close by, it didn\u2019t make sense and her brain couldn\u2019t process it. A wall in her heart was the only way to believe that her dream of making it in America still worked. A dogged pursuit of excellence the only thing keeping her stagnant, tied to the now falling empire. It wasn\u2019t until that president started mirroring Hitler ever more closely that she realized between her depression and the slide into authoritarianism, she had to get out. And even if she felt a little scared about how to be Jamaican again, she felt the comfort of belonging, of possibility. You can\u2019t just run into Joeys in Nashville.<\/p>\n<p>He was holding her now, arms wrapped around her waist as they looked out to the expanse together. She kissed his arm, and he raised it to her shoulder, lightly pushing her to face him. They melted into each other.<\/p>\n<p>Georgie, bless him, stayed out for five hours. On his return, Joey walked her to her SUV, protesting all the way about her driving at night. Raina waved him off; she wasn\u2019t about to let Georgie sleep in the hammock. As Joey leaned against the car he teased, \u201cSo you gonna ghost me again now Raina? I leave in two days but you know I always have an amazing time with you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNah I won\u2019t ghost you again. I don\u2019t know what we doing still but I won\u2019t ghost you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He chuckled low, \u201cI don\u2019t know either but as long as we talking, we go find out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He kissed her lightly through the window. \u201cReach back safe ok, lemme know when you reach home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And she did.<\/p>\n<p>For a few months, they spoke regularly — calls, texts, even a video call every so often. Neither of them seemed to want to be seriously romantic (to the point where she lowkey forgot his last name), but they knew there was something there. She made plans for Trinidad carnival in February. He said he would be home. He asked if she would be up for him visiting Jamaica in May for his birthday. She said she would love that.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_11549\" style=\"width: 732px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11549\" data-attachment-id=\"11549\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/14\/bodysurfing\/screenshot-2026-08-14-at-7-10-32-pm\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-14-at-7.10.32-PM.png?fit=722%2C952&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"722,952\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"<p>Illustration by Ikem Smith<\/p>\n\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-14-at-7.10.32-PM.png?fit=722%2C952&ssl=1\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11549\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-14-at-7.10.32-PM.png?resize=722%2C952&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"722\" height=\"952\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-14-at-7.10.32-PM.png?w=722&ssl=1 722w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-14-at-7.10.32-PM.png?resize=228%2C300&ssl=1 228w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-14-at-7.10.32-PM.png?resize=600%2C791&ssl=1 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 722px) 100vw, 722px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-11549\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Illustration by Ikem Smith<\/p><\/div>\n<p>But then, one morning in January, she said good morning, and he didn\u2019t text back. Weird, but not a huge deal. In three days, it became a huge deal. \u201cIn some ways, I deserve it\u201d, Raina thought. \u201cI ghosted last time after all.\u201d But it still stung. Could it be someone else? Someone closer? She knew this whole distance thing didn\u2019t make sense. She didn\u2019t know why she kept opening herself up like that, wishing for something she could be cradled in. It wasn\u2019t serious yet, she knew that. But also, wasn\u2019t the last time magical? She was late for work, so she headed out with her hair hastily brushed into a low bun. She grabbed her keys and started the engine, turning up the radio until the soca drowned out her anxiety.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome home to me, come home to me, come home to me!\u201d she sang out, letting her disappointment float away on Nailah Blackman\u2019s shiny synthesized voice. It was one of those songs that took her right back to that first Tuesday, to the joy in Joey\u2019s eyes as they flashed rags in the air. He was a stranger then, a friend of a friend\u2019s cousin, and they were no one to each other. And yet in that moment, Nailah bound her up in excitement, and Joey was the only one who matched her energy, singing the chorus to her as she sang to him. \u201cIf I ever let you down again, it was a misunderstanding\u2026\u201d the car radio crooned. A lump formed in her throat as she thought about the text. Should she try him again?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cZip 103, your high energy station!\u201d the radio shouted, way too loudly, jolting her out of her thoughts. She turned it down a few notches as they read the breaking news. A fishing boat had been targeted again. Another US bomb dropped on alleged drug smugglers. Three men killed instantly, three men with no names yet. Raina\u2019s mood shifted quickly to a hot anger. She could not escape that man, that president. His terror poured into her sea; her people disappeared for his oil. She didn\u2019t expect this type of intrusion when she first left the US; she thought she could be done with him. She thought she was safely under the waves, back in a country without enough firepower for them to care. Who would expect a sitting president to bomb small fishing boats in the Caribbean? Unprompted?<\/p>\n<p>In the parking lot at work now, she opened her Instagram feed and saw a reel of the drone’s-eye view of the bombing. It was a fuzzy, colourless view of a white cross in a white box flashing over the small boat, before a sudden disintegration. In the boat\u2019s place, all that was left was open ocean with a few pieces floating nearby. The victims probably had not even known the drone was there, so high in the sky it was. She imagined the three unnamed men laughing, swapping stories, before a blinding flash ended their conversations forever. The video, the view from those who pulled the trigger, showed you couldn\u2019t see who or what was on the boat. They were just shapes on the way home. Casualties in an undeclared war. Scanning the caption now, she saw the names of those who had been lost. Dario Fraser, Joseph Fraser, and Matthew Ramoutar.<\/p>\n<p>She texted Joey again, immediately fearful, \u201cHey Joe, I know we haven\u2019t spoken in a little but let me know if everything is ok.\u201d An hour later, after her first meeting of the day, he still hadn\u2019t responded. Raina didn\u2019t want to look for his profile at first. They hadn\u2019t followed each other on purpose, at least not yet. They wanted to keep it casual for now, and she didn\u2019t want to see who he featured on his stories. But now, she was afraid that his last name was Fraser, afraid that his dad\u2019s name was Dario. The wall around her heart re-emerged as she tried to distance herself, making herself believe that he was fine, that he had just found another girl, or that he had forgotten her. She couldn\u2019t deal with America taking something else from her.<\/p>\n<p>Raina tried to focus on work, but as the hours passed, the quiet of her phone screamed at her. She could not drown the thoughts in the hum of the ocean. She felt pulled to the surface and tied there, hit with crest after crest, unable to jump in time or frankly even to anticipate the next one. She thought of his smile, his eyes, his hands. His laugh. That feeling of calm in the hammock in that moment of peace. The start of something. He knew her. She knew him. He might be gone now, stolen, and there was nothing anyone could do. That president was saying they were \u201cnarco-terrorists\u201d, and the UN was acting powerless, putting out statements and not much else.<\/p>\n<p>When her boss finally walked out the front door, she gave in. She typed \u201cJoseph Fraser\u201d into Instagram and saw Joey\u2019s smile gleaming back at her from the second profile she clicked. There was no new story. In his latest post, he stood hugging the shoulders of an older man holding a fishing net, his beautiful smile stretched on both their faces. The caption said that he was going to Venezuela to bring back a boat with his dad. In the comments, Raina saw his friends writing RIP, dropping flower emojis. She was torn from the ties and thrown into the shoreline. Out of breath, she was spinning, spinning in clouds of sand.<\/p>\n<p>Who do you tell when the person who kills your [almost] man also controls the world? How do you know which way is up?<\/p>\n<p><em>Between September 2025 and March 2026, approximately 163 people have been killed by the United States armed forces in extrajudicial bombings of small boats in the Caribbean. Operation Southern Spear, as it is called, has not released any evidence to support their claims that any of the victims were smuggling drugs. Victims\u2019 families who have spoken to the press say that their loved ones were not involved in the drug trade and worked as fishermen or labourers. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tDominique Lyew, Ph.D. is a social researcher from Jamaica whose work is informed by Black feminisms, epistemic justice, and decoloniality. She lived in the US for several years, most recently working in non-profit communications in Washington, DC, before returning to Kingston last year. She is new to writing fiction and finds herself drawn to stories about Black women across the diaspora. She is also working on her first documentary film, broadly about Black queer love. You can find her on Instagram @drdomilyew.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joey popping up in Portland was kinda crazy. It was about three years ago that she met him at Trinidad carnival, her in her elaborate wings and he in his shirt from his friend\u2019s brand. He was a fisherman by trade, and the dexterity of his fingers translated beyond tying line, she remembered that much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":11549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[728594604,1747,728594591],"tags":[728594619],"class_list":["post-11546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dominique-lyew","category-fiction","category-pree-15","tag-pree-15","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Bodysurfing - PREE<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/14\/bodysurfing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bodysurfing - PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Joey popping up in Portland was kinda crazy. 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