by LaDonna Witmer

LaDonna Witmer, *2 Faces,* digital photograph, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

Sea Swimming

LaDonna Witmer | OCT 2025 | Issue 49

In the sea near Galway a woman howls at the full moon. She howls with her mouth full of salt. Salt and blood and something deeper than language. Last week her father died. He died in a lawn chair under the moon on the other side of the world. Not a full moon but a waxing crescent. A sliver of a fingernail. I am not a good witch. I do not carry the phases of the moon in my memory. I just look up and there it is, and I cannot name it waxing or waning, I cannot name it anything but Moon. I know it was a waxing crescent the day her father died because I looked it up. Google knows everything. Google knows too much. It's indecent. The woman was indecent when she swam beneath the moon. Indecent if you define decent in Biblical terms, which I do not, not anymore, not since I took a match to everything I believed in. Even then I didn't howl, not at the sky or the sea, not in any way you could hear. I was twenty-six and landlocked, didn't yet comprehend the strength of a scream. Had only been to the ocean once in my life. On the shore I felt small the way you feel small beneath the stars when you realize they are not twinkling pinheads in some tinkling lullaby but raging balls of fire with lives as complex as your own. The way the galaxy rolls out like a tide. The way your body understands where it came from. I wept the first time I saw the Pacific. Couldn't drag a deep enough breath. Maybe that's when I first felt the urge to howl, the itch to tear off my clothes like a body in flames and throw myself into the surf but it was daylight. No moon. Families on the beach with their inflatables and picnic coolers and sticky-fingered children. I was never a strong swimmer, held my nose with one hand when I jumped into the deep end. Too afraid to be indecent. I sucked the scream back down into my left lung and no one ever knew. The woman in the Galway sea, she emptied her lungs entirely. Held back nothing. Made the moon proud. Hung her voice in the sky and poured her grief in the water and let both carry her someplace entirely new. The next day she sent a text Last night I went fucking sea swimming in the ocean and howled at the moon. It was cathartic and weird and scary and cold and I loved it. I loved it. I read her message and then I made my kid a peanut butter and cherry jelly sandwich and sliced it and tucked it inside a stainless steel bento box which I then slid inside a forest green backpack with a galaxy patch I sewed on the front pocket, little synthetic stars, and then I climbed into my VW which I say is not a minivan but it is, let's be real, it is so mom-coded and I drove my kid to school and I kissed their strange and precious head and said Love you have a good day and I drove back home and signed into Slack and got my list of tasks that I must do so they give me money for my time and I kept remembering that day I went out to the Farallons, the only time I went whale watching in my twenty years of living right there where I could see the islands on a fog-free day and the one time I took a boat out I was seasick the minute we sailed out the Golden Gate. I sat in the belly of the boat and watched the horizon seesaw and I said to myself Fuck these whales, I wish I was on dry land and everyone else stood on the deck with salt on their cheeks looking giddy with awe and I stared down at my land-lubbing shoes and thought about all the times I took a leap and paid for it with pain. And here I am in my safe and gorgeous life with all my good choices lined up like some kind of Pinterest cheese board. Some people would kill for this brand of boring, but my friend is out there sea swimming at night with her clothes in a pile on the sand. By so many metrics her life is a goddamn mess, but I can hear the rattle of my own howl still lodged in my left lung and sometimes I think about who it would hurt if I let it tear free. What curse would I break, or what blessing? How bad could it be if I let in the moon?

LaDonna Witmer is a Professional Word Nerd. Amateur Succulent Gardener. Irish Goodbye Enthusiast. Sometime Donkey Rescuer. Longtime Tea Drinker. Foul-Mouthed Heathen. Former Goth Girl. Current Frumpy Person. Aspiring Bog Witch.