words & art by shé

bookshelf

Tag: solo

  • Love is Love

    I was sixty. He was thirty-two. I liked his kindness and swagger, but at first I didn’t even recognize him from day to day. It took me months to figure out that he was interested in a non-platonic relationship. But then… He was doing something in the bow of his boat, leaning over away from…

  • Alarms

    Alarm cannot be hushed. So said Habibi’s smoke detector when I burned breakfast, along with Fire. I push the center button, but Alarm cannot be hushed. Pot in the cockpit, hatches open, fans on… finally, the alarm shuts off. I did this in the tiny house a few times too, before I disabled the alarm. Small spaces fill with smoke…

  • Underpowered

    “I need help!” I yell in Spanish, and throw a line to Enrique on the fuel dock. But Habibi’s motor craps out and we drift away toward the concrete sea wall. Men line the top of it, to help push her away from what I believe is a certain crash. I’d been trying to leave…

  • Swimming the Gulf

    “Is that your mother?” A woman on a nearby towel at a Mississippi beach asks me this as I carry the beach umbrella and other paraphernalia back to the parking lot. The Gulf of Mexico is choppy with wind waves. It is June 2018. I nod. “Enjoy her,” she says, smiling. “I do,” I say,…

  • Priorities

    Her face is suffused with bliss as the whitewater carries her all the way to shore. She’s pushed up, beaming, holding onto the boogie board. When it scrapes bottom, she rolls off onto wet sand laughing, then carefully rises to her feet, turns around, and wades back out. Short auburn hair plasters her scalp, and…

  • Drive Like a Duchess

    Drive like a Duchess with an entourage. The words appear in my brain as I’m taking the inaugural trip with my Tiny House on Wheels. I’ve had one lesson in towing from a kind employee of the RV seller, and now I’m on my own. Cannot speed with a travel trailer, even a cute silver-and-yellow one.…

  • Surf ‘n’ Shop

    You can’t carry groceries on a surfboard, I used to say. Surfing is just for fun.  Well, turns out that I can carry groceries on a surfboard — in a backpack as I paddle prone on Torq, the funboard. Webbed gloves bought for swimming years ago are now quite handy. Drenched on the way in, though, when…

  • Maps

    “Yes, you can do it alone, now that you have the map,” a friend reassures mountain climber Louise Heinemann (from “Out and About in Baltistan,” in the 1992 Seal Press anthology, Leading Out). I have at least three maps, or charts, of this marine area: Habibi’s navigation system; a boating app on the phone; and Captain…

  • The Jib is Up

    … or out, as the case may be. (Habibi’s headsail, or jib, is on a vertical furler at the bow, with lines to control it running back to the helm. The sail unfurls horizontally; well, triangularly.)  Exactly thirty-nine weeks after I moved onboard, almost a year after my first sailing course, I sail solo. No…

  • Jiggity-Jig

    Home again, home again, tiny house in tow, see how she flies! It’s been almost three and a half years since I inhabited my T@B travel trailer, and boy, did I miss her! So cheerful, so easy-going, so functional and fun. No more leaky tent. No more cramped back seat, feet hanging out the window.…