DIVE IN! Marine-Life Fundraiser

Paris Lit Up is working with poet and producer Rhys Ashton Tucker to raise money for the Marine Conservation Society. On May 10, we’ll be running an open mic, followed by a creative showcase, and inviting our audience and participants to donate generously to our MCS-approved GoFundMe page.

Planning this event while pregnant has turned on a creative tap inside me, inspiring this piece which dips into the fear of looking within and acknowledging truths and responsibility. I didn’t intend to compare my unborn child with marine pollution. But it happened, and I am grateful for the words that have flowed since.

Do please join us here on May 10, delight in the depths of artists from around the world, and send some money to help the MCS clean up our mess. I also recommend checking out their web page to see what they’re up to.

In the meantime…

Breaking Waters

by Emily Ruck Keene

My birth and adopted countries are kept solidly separate by the liquid English Channel, the Manche Britannique.

A thin strait within the Atlantic Ocean, separating northern France from southern England, as little as 21 miles of water hold immeasurable depths of death caused by the countless wars fought across them.

For me, the Channel has always been a metaphor; her imposing cliffs on either side are chalk bookends that define the wasteland between my cultural identities.

As deep as I might travel under her waters, my consideration of the Channel has remained both on the surface and below her content, but I have never taken a breath to swim inside. Now hosting a life within my body, I am still trying to see over and under without looking in.

21 miles of water. As narrow she may be, what weight! The arm, La Manche, a body part that stretches with muscled life, I have left deliberately undiscovered as much as my own mid-section.

What weight! What ways I have found of avoiding these waters! Now, ferrying in my body another’s future, I have no choice but to reach out and break into the break. To see and feel the consequences of humanity, and to care for the life within.

Emily Ruck Keene