Treasures of the World Lost and Found

Treasures of the World Lost and Found

In case you are wondering, this is a map of shipwrecks and excavations across the globe. My eyes are resting now on the Sadana Island wreck.
The ship carried fragrant resins, incense, Chinese porcelain, raw coffee beans, cardamom, coriander, nutmeg and black pepper. An unusual amount of coconuts were also found in large storage jars.
Think now upon such a ship, her wooden deck warm with sun or wet with rain, sounds of bare feet or sandals or boots I don’t know I wasn’t actually there. I only have bits and pieces of the truth. And isn’t this how it always is? Maybe it was at night and the stars shifted. Or maybe the coral reef grew at a phenomenal rate since the last time the captain sailed these waters. Maybe, after a particularly fine meal laden with said spices, a storm blew in and the crew was just too full to do anything about it. Or maybe there was no storm at all, maybe everyone had fallen asleep at the same time, lulled by the incense in the air, the rocking of the ship, the rhythmic creaking of wood on wood and sonorous lapping that echoed in the last hollow nooks of an otherwise overstuffed hull. Maybe none of these things happened.
I do know, for sure, that she ran aground on a coral reef in the Red Sea somewhere between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Are you curious what happened? I was, but now that I know, I just can’t believe it.

There are many things we may never know fully because we only have bits and pieces of all out lies and half-truths. That’s what I found. That the surface is one thing but don’t make the same mistake I made. There is always something or someone that lies beneath. The truth is. I ran aground before I set eyes on the island. And I felt it before it actually happened. It’s hard for me to admit but something was off. I suddenly felt my weight. The water lost its depth until gravity drowned my weightlessness. So beautiful from above the reefy bitch scratched my underbelly like a thousand razors and ripped out my heart of coconuts and coriander. The water that rushed in was my blood pouring out. My bow pointing towards land, my body parallel to the reef, I slid into the sand and leaned on my left side for eternity.