The ocean theme continues in week three of Writing in the Dark’s WANTED intensive . Which makes sense because the ocean and marine life is my whole personality right now (I’ve included my current physcal TBR stack above as proof).

Week three’s theme was “The Language of Trembling & Objects of Displaced Desire.” The lesson and exercise were inspired by Maggie Nelson’s Bluets , which I’ve heard so much about but have yet to read (yet another book on my TBR).

The main exercise was to write 20 numbered propositions (à la Bluets) about a thing/place/object of displaced desire. Can you guess what my thing was? Can you guess what desire it’s displacing?

Below are the first nine propositions. You can find the whole list + the pre-writing exercises that answer the above two questions on my Patreon (this time, for paid subscribers only).

Sealets

1. The summer before seventh grade, I took private swimming lessons at the gym where my dad played racquetball. I wanted to feel more confident in the deep end. To stroke instead of paddle, kick instead of tread. I learned to swim from one end of the pool to the other, never surfacing on the turnaround. That was the summer I cast a tropical fish comforter over my bed and painted the walls aqua.

2. I admit that I don’t have a good argument for digging a 6’ x 10’, four-feet deep saltwater pool in our backyard. Only that I’m homesick. Only that sea salt could save me.

3. In her book Enchantment, Katherine May writes about taking swim lessons as an adult after getting caught, twice, in a riptide during her regular ocean swims. Sometimes our most familiar ground can drown us.

4. The last time I swam was in a Minnesota lake. My partner and I swam out just enough to sever our toes from the lake bed. I hadn’t even tread water in years, let alone swam. I get it now. How a moment of panic can drown you a stroke or two away from higher ground.

5. Sometimes we need the bravery of our own backyard.

6. Sometimes I just want to jump out of my skin and into a fish tail, pretend I’m a mermaid again.

7. Imagine all of the trinkets you could leave for me to find at the bottom of the pool: a rose quartz, a silver whale charm, an old shell you dug up from the ground beneath the blue spruce.

8. Every season, I consider the adult swim classes offered by Minneapolis Community Education. Every season, I think I get a little closer to clicking Enroll.

9. But if I had a pool . . .