Diving Into The Wreck, Again (Responding to A. Rich)
- Elika Khosravani
- May 19
- 4 min read
By Elika Khosravani
I will begin by saying that Every Lady Sings The Blues. It is a terrible hue, a blue of utter pain. Coiled into a wound of despair, it festers.
And so, I am bent at the waterline. Cross-dressed, cross-legged; liquid feet rarely tread the surface. A static eternity, in turns. And what of it?
While everyone else heads home, I let my mind dance forward, and with each smeared step, I’m splitting open. How could all these tangled truths, caught in coral reefs and rotting wood, be, in essence, a site of renewal? I must admit it is not simple. But I will try to explain.
I trail along the cobbled coastline with my bare feet and scraped knees. I pick at my pruned fingers. I listen to the splatter of rain wash everything away. I walk until the ground softens and slackens, until I am waist-deep in blue-green water, until I am lapping up salt and spit and sand. It chews through clumps of hair, of memory. I stay and float. Dawn breeds dusk breeds dawn: the crescent of the horizon stays the same.
Next tide’s reprise, I seek a different prize. Tomorrow, I set sail with masts I have weaved—pen pressed to night, a runnel of ink marks the stars. Look behind me to see if the wild wind has stayed the course.

Vessel grim, daring and darling. O scalding shades of blue. Purring Polaris, curled in my lap.
Where shall we wait? We the ladders, the forgotten ruins, the buoys. Flip over the cyanometer and stick it into the surface. Unresponsive: stick it down your throat instead. The temperature does not change. Currents roll the dice. Cackle of Medusa, lost in an azure haze. Swallow me dry, at sea, at least.
I lick at my nails. I have no teeth; they have not grown in yet, and I do not know why.
Black rubber armour. Plastic goggles, oversized band. Oxygen mask. Dangling feet, furled flippers. Stay, just a little longer. Fling the anchor: plateau punctured, a gaping wound. Myth-busting nereid, its release coated with hesitation; slow like doxycycline, plunging into the sunken sand-bed.
Pinch your nose; close your eyes; forego the ladder; step off the ledge; don’t think twice; don’t look back. Deep in saturation, sink slowly into oblivion. Writhing in black, a pseudo-embryonic Eden. I don’t know which way is up, or down. Swimming in rimmed colour, twisting and turning. Descend into discovery.
What a fair sight, this altar—beacon of truth! Wondrous was the wreck: stained with sin, sagging with guilt. Drenched with ichor, adorned with treasure. Yet beneath that piscine vision, I began to see an ancient pain. I saw a sunken Pharos, warped radiance wet with blood.
Circle the wreck, then. Endure the sickled sorrows, veneered with gold and silver. A ribbon of red, long and crimson. Tied to my throat, I am tugged to mast, insistently. Felled from the forest, this water-eaten log: my ripped roots. Peel the planks, bark by bark. Scrape off the barnacles, the moss, the gems. Bleach out the blues and browns, dissolve this rite of devilish decadence. Book of myths stripped bare.
A stream of sunlight slashes through the surface. A tear in the static. It ripples, towards the shingled shore.
Face-to-face with a carved figurehead, I recall my hometown, and with it, a siren. Perched, silently—her stare a slit of steel. Crowned with seaweed, her bejewelled biga: heavy is the head.
Now I want to ask her: Do you dive in? Or do you hesitate, unmoving, and peer into the wreck? She does not answer. Her lips—pale and still and violet: “O, loud-moaning Amphitrite!” Lovely mouth, gagged with algae. Overflowing, she swallows the weeds and spits out foam.
I am caught between two horrifying fates: the siren or the abyss. Which will snatch my voice first: waiting, or drowning?
Whether I sink or swim, I dream of Argonaut. Of glory and gore. Of sun-dried corpses, blood and wine staining the wooden deck. Siren, whatever did they make of you and your sanguine delight?
Torn between Scylla and Charybdis, I stop digging. I float there, knife-blade in hand, beam of bubbles beaded on my brows, wild-eyed and braid unravelled. I float there, in the wreck I further wrecked, alone in the darkness, in this glittering gulf, in its all-consuming silence.
Ridged finger-ends, skin suppurating. My wrinkled hands, too weak to steer the wheel or wield my blade, but strong enough to hold the book, one final time. Remember that all words are written in water.
When will having lived a life take a name? Nothing comes of nothing. Now, I think, I can admit freely: a gem may saturate the world with colour, but one jewel alone a crown does not make. I want the crown.
Let the sailors, anchored in ambition, dig me up. By my salt-matted hair or limp arm, veins of viridian splitting through flesh. By whatever limb remains, after the fish have feasted through my rubber armour. Waxed and waned, they lay me on the deck.
Let them peel me up, and abandon my will therewith. I sink, but I remember.