mind full boat breath navigation manual by Amritha York

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mind full boat breath navigation manual.


stop, navigating your boat through canals full of rocks and tricky crevices.

you’re lost.  you need to acknowledge this.

you’re not responsible for that one storm, or maybe even the several after, or that you inherited a dilapidated boat, or that you never learned how to sail.

but you’re the lion, and you have to work within this. so then, why are you standing in a vessel where the  water hugs and snakes up around your feet?

don’t overcomplicate it.  you know you need to jump.

so jump. jump out of the boat, stop pouring out buckets of water. just jump.

stop panicking in the water. stop. panicking.

stop fighting. stop gasping for breath. stop yelling for help. stop maniacally shoving down anyone trying to save you.

there is no one else. it’s just you.

stop panicking. stop flailing. stop fighting. i said, stop panicking.

you’re in the water, and you need to accept this.

let go. it’s just water. it’s just momentary discomfort. 

breathe. float. breathe. float. breathe. float. 

trust the water will hold you. confide in the process. 

don’t over think it. this doesn’t require tools, renown wisdom, or honed coping.

it’s primordial, existential, and ancestral.

it’s simple. you can’t make it to land, unless you can swim, and you can’t swim until you can float.

so float. 

float as long as you need, float and rely on the current to bring you to land. 

float and hum your favourite song. float and file your nails. float and roll some chapatti.

when you’re ready, and have become a nice shrivelled buoy, find the movement in your arms, the your legs.

feel yourself move the crisp, cold water and the weight of it. feel the water embrace you.

feel the sun gently blister your skin, the crisp sea air cooling the drops of salt water on your exposed skin.

feel yourself move through and trust it to guide you to where you need to go.
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not where you want to go, but where you need.

and if you’re tired, float some more. 

getting to land is only an actuality if you can swim, and you can’t swim until you float. 

don’t look for land, land will find you. 

just float, and if you can’t float, maybe you’ll just have to accept becoming a mer-person.


 


Amritha York is a Torontonian queer, light skinned brown, first generation immigrant, womxn.  She is a new mother to the light of her life, Akira. 

​Amritha writes from a narrative perspective, often accounting first person reflections of her own life. She writes about experiences of traumas, addiction, child loss, living in poverty, and the cultural gaps of a brown person. She was forced to give up writing for two decades and only now has forced herself to find the courage to share her stories again. She hopes to push boundaries of how we use storytelling out of stuffy exclusivity into generationally healing words of comfort. Her writing is a hybrid of poetry, prose, and creative non-fiction that seeks to break traditional and conventional structures and perspectives.
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She has won at regional and provincial levels for poetry with the Legion in the past and participated in Gardiner Ceramic Museum’s International Day of Violence Against Women with written prose and spoken word. More recently her work was part of a social action project for women in vulnerable situations distributed by YWCA.

Currently, she has volunteers and works as an RN in many aspects of mental health (specifically trauma, abuse, and addiction) and hopes to make poetry and writing more accessible and digestible in these spaces. She often uses art and writing in small groups to help initiate healing and promote reflection. Her background of working in the medical field and volunteering in the community influences a lot of her writing.

She hopes to empower, embolden and provide support and shine a light for others experiencing pain in the shadows in the bottom of the well.

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