Tides Turned
Waterloo, Canada
2021, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
I heard once in my coastal district of Cox’s Bazar that fishermen used to tease
the waters when they reeled in their fish
as if they were leaning in
for a kiss I used to stand out by the seaport dock
waiting for my husband. Studying seashells and barnacle-crusted boats
that were never his. Sailors whisper that he died
Somewhere out on the Bay of Bengal but I don’t like
the thought of him pulled beneath the current. So instead, I spend my days
peering out at the specks of yellow cutting across the ocean like the ghee
I used to make his favorite bread with. My husband is only a fingertip away;
If I look into the water, I will see his face reflected on the
surface. Shimmering, my makeshift mirage.
***
Before the sea tides turned against us, he and I loved living by
the sea beach. Jutting out from the coastline were little ramshackle homes,
that we helped to repair, one by one. Wounds sealing shut. Though tourist hotels
and new construction spat out billows of smoke into the graying sky,
We were too foolish to notice that it wasn’t our town’s pockets being stuffed, but those of foreign investors. Too young to connect the pollution to the sea tides that rose with each
passing monsoon. Back then, my husband and I went surfing without a second thought. Married
by the sandbank with sapphire rings. The ocean was our overseer, the sea our sustenance.
Somehow, we thought we’d be safe. Until one day, my husband came home with a net free of
catch and a message.
The last big flood had fish flopping up the shores—but on the other side of the beach. He and a
few other fishermen were headed on an expedition across the Bay of Bengal to search for them.
The more you replay
a memory, the less real it becomes.
I tell myself that each time I spin the moment he left me
on loop in my head; a record player out of hell. Because if my mind is playing
tricks on me, he is still somewhere where the sea has not yet taken him
captive. He is still floating in the blue, waiting to bubble to the surface.
***
Now, fishermen by the dock know better than to lean above the endless maw of ocean. Not
when it can jump up at any moment and lunge right back.
For when the water kisses, it consumes whatever is in its path: Rusted metal. Bones of tourists.
Blood of fishermen like my husband. I half-expect
the waves to return tipped with red right before they retreat back
into themselves. I am old enough now to see the coastal town I live in for what it is.
I no longer set two plates of pickled ilish for dinner and stop imagining my husband’s
remains along the crush of white foam. But I still listen to the swell of distant
tides and picture dying as slipping
into an icy bath. Did the brackish sea that once embraced him like a hug
become a chokehold; the canopy of sand he used to rest on tightening into a noose?
Or did the water let him go gently, saltwater tears smoothing out the creases in his
weathered skin? If I go, will I be able to follow him down to
the bottom, past the once-kaleidoscopic coral reefs even if no one can hear me
beneath the rushing of the waves?
Nothing can cleave a heart in two like the sea.
Reflection
Reflection
I used prose-like poetry to personify how quickly the ocean became hostile to humans. The narrator shifts from getting married on the beach to perceiving water as a place of death and destruction. By employing her universal yet abstract feelings of grief, love, and loss, I wanted to illustrate the concrete impacts of human activity like pollution on our rising sea from an empathetic lens, rather than a pedagogic one. Beneath the poem’s surface however, there is a message for those who dare look further. As a Bengali-American, I wrote this for my fellow citizens of the West to recognize our responsibility in battling climate change. 18 million Bengali citizens are expected to be displaced by 2050 due to ocean flooding, even though as a nation, Bangladesh only produces 0.3% of world emissions. We must use our privilege to protect those who are more adversely affected than us, not only because we depend on the ocean for over half of our oxygen supply, but out of simple altruism and solidarity. The location referenced in this poem, Cox's Bazar, is the longest sea beach of the world. In writing this, I feel more empowered than ever to protect it by drawing awareness of our out-of-control emissions.