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Show A The ship I make for my father later that week in art therapy will not make up for what I have done. I know this even as I choose a ship especially for my father because he I loves the ocean, because he is in the Navy, because, even at that age, the sea has become a powerful totem in my life. I know this even as I press the clay into the foil mold, filling the indentations for the clipper sails, watching the ship take form. I know this even as I select Pacific blue to paint the background. As I carefully wrap the present, making sure the bow is full and tight atop the package, I do not deceive myself. I know that once broken both bodies and people bear scars. One day a doctor simply says you can go home, but the bump is still there. Maybe reabsorbed into the body but there all the same. Deep under the surface it remains, present but invisible like the gap in my life when the world continued without me or the first moment you knowingly cause pain. For years my father will prop the ship on his dresser amidst school pictures, spare change, reading glasses, and empty matchbooks. I watch it, frozen against its sea of blue, never going forward, never going back, waiting for it to hoist anchor and sail past the frame. I tell myself that as long as it remains on his dresser, I am forgiven. Only one picture exists from-my time spent in the hospital. Looking at it now, I am struck by how small an eight-year-old girl is. My body does not seem big enough, my shoulders broad enough, my skin sturdy enough to have carried the responsibility I determined I must in this world. In the picture, I am curled in a ball on a blanket, assuming the same position I had earlier in the week for the spinal tap. We, my entire 85 |