Inkling 2025 - Flipbook - Page 21
They told me she drowned.
That she went too far, sank too deep, and the
tide was relentless.
I remember standing on the shore, my
mother’s voice drifting through the salt air as
she waded out into the sea, her hair dancing
in the wind. Her laugh was full of music.
It felt like the ocean had taken her, not in a
violent, chaotic way, but in a way that almost
made it seem…inevitable. Like she was
meant to become part of it.
She had been everything to me—the sound
of her humming in the kitchen, crafting
meals and stories that always captivated me.
Her warm, steady presence was the thread
that held my world together. When she was
gone, the thread snapped. Especially for my
father.
I remember the 昀椀rst time I saw him after.
The emptiness in his eyes had already
started to set in, but it was more than grief.
There was a wall. Something inside him was
crushed, hallowed out. He wasn’t the man
who held me when I was scared anymore.
Instead, he stood in silence, his face a mask
of bitterness.
My father says the sea took her. Like it knew
she was made of something di昀昀erent.
“She loved the sea more than she loved us,”
he told me once, his voice 昀氀at.
I was six.
He pulled us from the coast, from the house
where sunlight used to spill into every room
and the 昀氀oor was always covered in sea salt.
We moved inland—to a place where the wind
didn’t carry waves and the silence felt like a
punishment.
He stopped looking me in the eyes. He
cooked in silence. Slammed plates onto the
counter. Called me “girl” more than he called
me Daphne. Because I looked like her.
It started the day I couldn’t stop crying
after school. I had walked past the town’s
dry fountain and reached out. The water
shimmered, curling as if it recognized me.
And in the re昀氀ection, I didn’t see my brown
eyes. I saw blue. The same blue as hers. The
ends of my black hair shimmered, glowing
with blue strands that vanished as fast as
they came. I ran home shaking.
I wrote it all down. In a blue notebook I hid
under the 昀氀oorboard. I wrote about how the
lake near our town whispered to me. How I
felt alive when I was near it. How the water
glowed when I touched it.
One night, I came back late. My clothes were
damp. He was waiting in the kitchen, making
pasta puttanesca like he always did when he
was angry—loud, sharp, burning garlic until
he 昀椀lled the air with bitterness.
He slammed the spoon onto the counter.
“Where were you?”
“I–I just went for a walk.”
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t lie to me, girl.”
“I wasn’t lying, I just—”
He moved fast. Yanked the 昀氀oorboard up, my
notebook in his hand. Every page laid bare.
“You’ve been doing this?” he barked, holding
up the book like it was poison. “Sneaking o昀昀
like her?”
I stayed quiet.
He slammed it down. “You think this is a
joke?”
“No. But I miss her. And you don’t even say
her name!”
“Because she’s dead! And it’s the water that
killed her.”
“It didn’t kill her,” I whispered. “You did.”
The silence was brutal. “What did you say?”
“You killed her memory. You killed everything
INKLING 2025 | 21
