1001 Nights Cast

Every so often my heart springs a leak. This sentence is perhaps a writer’s weakness: I can only describe my life with a metaphor. I can only explain in similies.

If my heart were a boat, for example, it would probably not be a very sturdy boat, once, twice, wrecked and repaired, leaking and cracking along the same tired seams. My heart the boat never learns.

If my heart were a boat, and if my life were the sea, for example, you would find that most of the time my heart the boat does just fine for itself, moving right along, sailing further and further away from its early wrecks. But sometimes you might find my heart the boat taking on water in the same spots when it enters familiar territory. You might find my heart the boat springing a leak where there once was no leak, or where at least the leak had been patched and patched again. My heart the boat never learns.

If my heart were a boat, and if my life were the sea, and if you were the storm or the reef or the injury, for example, you might understand that you’ve come alongside my heart the boat and torn the mended seam, thinned the weathered wood. And I would blame you, but my heart the boat never learns, never changes course, treats every obstacle as a fait accompli. My heart the boat never learns.

If my heart were a boat, and if my life were the sea, and if you were the storm or the reef or the injury, and if you’d seen my map before, for example, you might know better. You might know that I never know better. You might have moved the immovable, rerouted the current, rearranged the course before I could even have noticed the boat running aground again. You might have stopped the leak before it started, sealed the small hole before I set out to sea. You might have done that for me. I always hope you will. My heart the boat never learns.