An Archived Report Of An Afternoon In A Kingdom By The Sea
- Filomeno Dias
- Jul 21
- 5 min read
It was many and many a month ago,
That I walked in a kingdom by the sea,
And bearing a tone of which you may know,
I play on the words for Annabel Lee;
The final poem of a vexed and weird man
And yet this poem brings me glee
For so loved was maiden Annabel Lee
As the sounding sea is loved by me
This sounding sea is slate-grey and tan-brown rocky and austere and as gorgeous as life. Last year, chatting to one of my professors, he told me that there’s something about the sea that his students are either very drawn to, or they are not at all. Growing up by the sea apparently gives you an understanding of sorts.
Back home, I am most excited to bother my siblings in their rooms and see the ocean staring back at me for entire afternoons. I bring my books, my journal, my music out to the sea and bask in all of it. The Atlantic, in its truthful ugliness and endlessness and sunken bodies, is also an enormous, singing, rushing body in constant transformation. I have found some semblance of this singing and rushing in my own body; the wanting to be heard and seen for what it is. The day after my sister’s birthday, I went out and tried to keep up with the sea in my journal. Maybe I wanted to find it for what it was on that afternoon.
*
16th December 2024
I am rushed out to the sea and it’s closing in. [the sea gave one an immediate sense of how large the world was, how magnificent and how terrifying]1.
The water is clear in the pools and becomes a murky but shiny rock-green in the pits the ocean has flooded. I am reminded of the summer day where the water turned into jade in the harsh sunlight. Its different sides collide like a kaleidoscope in my eyes. The tide sways and swirls today but the occasional wave does crash. It sounds calm but playful. The late afternoon ocean says do not overstay your welcome, but the beach tempts me to anyways. The sea has all the colours it lets me see and more.
The rocks are smaller and smaller each time I’ve been away. Maybe I don’t feel so small anymore. They would look more inviting to climb if they weren’t so slicked up. They look less difficult today. But not today [“Never turn your back on the ocean,” was the counsel2].
The foam (not much today) laps up the shingle by the boulder I’m sat on, ever closer but languid. The sunset’s started seeping colours into the water and it is a timid pale gold. I contemplate putting my shoes in the larger pools for the noise they would make in the water against the rock, but I wouldn’t be able to go in past my ankles, which would look and feel pathetic. My body is compelled to greet the sea. The sky is turning liquid orange, torn up by grey-blue clouds, stretched out like streets and plains. The colour doesn’t quite reach the waves. Some mussels have found a resting spot in a shallow spot behind a boulder. I saw one of them tiptoe back into the water. It’s been taken care of by a soft swell.
The liquid orange is seeping into the shore now, one lap at a time. A comforting change. As the wind picks up I listen to Sinead’s Nothing Compares 2 U. It catches me delightfully off-guard; I haven’t heard it in years. There’s a thread of highlighter orange-red at a respectful but affectionate distance from the horizon, against the streaky pale grey-blue clouds. It’s very charming.
The gold in the sky has poured into the shine of the water everywhere. I passed by a neo-nazi sticker on my way here and I feel a bit less safe. The sea’s mouth is the place for me. I rip it out on my way back. Nikki Giovanni’s house is soothing for my nerves and being home and the stares. I’m still learning to be the guy I’m meant to be.
[Am I speaking through English?3] I think I’ll know it when I feel it. It’s happened a couple of times.
Going to take pictures of the beach for my darling because I love him and the sea and I hope he sees the same wordless something that I do. I record some videos too so the ocean can sing, the sounding sea. [The sea sounded like a thousand secrets, all whispered at the same time.4]
The sun is blaring out now. Water and sky. The sun is lining the slick of the rocks and boulders now. More foam now. It’s warm for a bit and then the sun is trapped by a cloud and it’s cold now. How delicate. Still pretty. Everyone is passing through the beach now like it’s over. But the waves are still coming in and the birds and sky are still up. Ela is playing, my favourite.
The horizon has not claimed the sun yet. In London it would not be sunny like this. gentle like this. The birds are crossing the sky to roost and the sun is tucking itself into the clouds, blanketing until the horizon line. The blanket turns mauve over the sun’s light. No more shadows. My phone can’t get the colours right, but it never would. Two guys clamber onto the beach like wandering deer. One yells. It seems the water is cold! I keep my smile to myself. I think it’s time for me to go.
*
Last summer, I realised I was trans. When I go back to the sea I love and the neighbourhood I don’t, it’ll be a bit harder to breathe but it’s only for a little longer. I have learned to be comfortable in my changing and the time it will take. Fighting my body is like fighting a current. Best for it to just wash over you on the shore. I will not drown. The sea’s mouth is the place for me. This is the first year I want to make resolutions for. They will come to me.
[I cannot be, and yet-an excruciating impossibility-I am. I will do anything not to be here5.]
I sit down by the waves and watch their foam and updowns, all singular, all returning. The sea lets you look a bit closer and lets you listen and know what it means.
I know what it means to me, and I am at peace being what I’m meant to be.
[I will swim forever.
I will die for eternity.
I will learn to breathe water.
I will become the water.
If I cannot change my situation I will change myself6.]
1 Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2001), 12.
2 Brand, p. 12.
3 Nikki Giovanni, My House (New York: Niktom, 1975).
4 Brand, p. 13.
5 Susan Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1, no. 3, (1994): 237–54, 247.
6 Stryker, p. 247.
Edited by Roxy-Moon Dahal Hodson
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