“Did you want to cut the cord, Dad?” The mask pulsed in and out with the question. Whenever I returned from a walk about deck, long moments gazing into the rhythms of the waves, visible or not, but surely felt at the rising of the bow, an express elevator jumping several stories at a time and then down, as smoothly and quickly as before, or in the side to side motion on the fantail, which cradled seamen in its sway, rocked them gently in their sleep, I would pause in the blackness of the light locker, in the absence of sound, and wait for the sea to fill me as a child listens to a shell, my own rhythms filling the room.

“Did you want to cut the cord?” Brown-smeared gloves extended the scissors toward me. They were chrome, with loops for the fingers, blades bent at an angle, the lower blade, dull at the tip. These were the kind of scissors used to remove bandages, the same kind that leave birthmarks on foreheads.

I would sit in the passageway, outside the locker, at the foot of a ladder, bathed in a red glow. I would listen to the machinery, the creaking of the ship, watch, as no one passed by. There were only the rhythms, only that red glow. I would rise, tell myself goodnight, aloud, as if to reify my existence.

It screamed, eyes clenched beneath bright lights, its body shifting colors, whites and blues and reds. And there were arms, delicate arms and legs, bicycling slowly.

“Cut between the clamps.” The twisted grey cord was pinched closed by yellow plastic wheels with teeth, six or eight inches apart, close to the small animated frame. It draped, smooth as wax between the bodies, and within.

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