A girl is 

a body of water. 

*1997.¹

In the early 2000s my aunt & uncle took me and my sister to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. There was a Titanic 

Exhibit. 

They gave us tickets upon entrance. God himself could not sink

this ship. A random gamble. Which class. A game of cards to see

who would survive. 

I remember the giant block of ice full of half-made handprints. A sign urging us 

to touch it. 

See how long you can last. 

This is how cold the water was that night.

No one could last. It burned.

How cold were we all on those nights when hands became knives?

When promises became vows to be broken. When friendship bracelets bled into

betrayals hidden behind walls covered in neon signs, flashing ‘GROW UP.’

My sister got a third class ticket. I got first. Guess who got to grow up 

according to the story we were sold. When we left our aunt said ‘That

was fun!’

If a body of water holds hundreds of dying girl bodies, what is a girl then? How can she

still have a body when the water swallows her whole? Is every ocean nothing but

girlhood?

*1998.²

The first time I saw sex on screen it was in Titanic. I was four. My mother was very pregnant. She was in bed in the old ranch house with the yellow walls inside and out a box of saltines perched on her chest—one of Rene Magritte’s paintings³—the only light was a bluish glow from the clunky, 90s, TV. 

Rose had just stepped out of the car. I was mesmerized. I crawled into bed beside my mother. She explained sex like Plato explained love.

When I lost my virginity fourteen years later I died of thirst. There is no girl if there is

no water. 

So I held my breath and waited for the iceberg to hit.

Waited for my body to become history.

*2016.⁴

Twenty-eight is a lethal temperature to any person. Eighteen is a lethal age to any girl. I never drank enough water

growing up. Hated the taste. 

Preferred pomegranate juice and sliced apricots. 

I wonder if the whales loved the taste of fifteen hundred souls. Who do you think tasted more bitter? The men or the women?

*3450.⁵

The Titanic wasn’t even the greatest maritime tragedy. No one talks

about that. 

Knives are 2.5 million years old. So they say. The Gebel el-Arak Knife. 

*1904.⁶

Kicking off the New Year like a game. Safety and security. Ride it. Dive under.

Succumb and freeze to death before breaking back through the surface. Even

polar bears can be reborn if they try hard enough. Do you feel

vulnerable yet? Your swim trunks have become icicle sticky. 

The little kids are all laughing on the shore.

And we’re all just dreaming of falling in love. Maybe we girls can find it before the 28

degrees cuts into us like a knife.

*633.⁷

An ocean is a tragedy. A girl is a ticket. Adolescence is a knife.

¹ 1997, the year Titanic was released in theaters.

² 1998, the year I turned four

³ Rene Magritte, the painter behind ‘The Imp of The Perverse’

⁴ 2016, my freshman year of college

⁵ 3450 BC, the year the oldest knife dates back to

⁶ 1904, the year of the first Polar Bear Plunge

⁷ 633, the room number of the Musée du Louvre where the Gebel el-Arak Knife now resides