Intruders

Sometime between yesterday afternoon and this morning, someone crawled under Habibi’s hull, moved a coconut oil container from on top of a wooden box, then took the wooden box.

This was a box—one of two—I had found nearby, after a set of rude humans shipped out and left their mess behind. I was using it as a work table.

What’s that? I shouldn’t care if someone creeps around my boat, rearranging things? It wasn’t my box in the first place? The original owner probably came back and snagged it?’ I live in a boatyard, get over it?

Boundaries, people. I grew up without them. Am learning to erect them, as well as maintain them.

Same day, on the way to swim, I thought I saw the problematic guard, the one who climbed up to Habibi’s deck one night and removed blackout cushions to see inside. Where I was sleeping. Do I feel safe here? No. Why not leave? Been thinking about it.

On the way home from the grocery store this week, I was harassed by a beeping taxi driver. When I wouldn’t respond to his demands to give me a ride, he called me a name. I continued walking, towing my wagon full of food, looking away. He finally drove off.

A few weeks ago a fisherman decided he had to fish where I was swimming. Miles of empty shoreline and he had to cast near me. I tried dialogue, in Spanish, and he mimicked me in English, so contemptuously that it silenced me. I sat in the water awhile, disbelieving, wondering what to do. Most of the fisherman in the area are friendly. Eventually a little voice said, Don’t tangle with an angry man, so I carefully got out. I did not fight or flee. I clambered to the rock with my belongings, changed clothes, ate breakfast. Sat.

Sometimes it’s pointless to engage. They aren’t interested, or assume they know who I am or what I’m about. Too bad. I am amazing. Luckily, I have the ocean. Try again, say the tides. It’s a new day. Love anyway. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Chatty, the Sea. Today I saw a rockfish and a sea lion, among other delights. And when I returned to the boatyard, I set the other wooden box back where I found it months ago.