A Tour of Artificial Islands
by Jessica Dawn
(fig. 1) Balboa is Split in Two
There is a ferry between Balboa and Balboa Island, a flat little boat that carries three cars and a handful of people and bikes from the city to the island and back, carving a straight line of wake in the water between the docks. The ferry is slow so the line of cars backs up onto the street. Another bridge would be easier, maybe. Maybe it would be easiest if they filled the channel in, pushed all the dirt that was dredged out back into the water, reunited the city and the island, erased the lines between them and made it one place instead of two.
But if there was a bridge or if they buried the water, I could not have taught you to ride a bike so we could pedal down to the little run-down pier and stand on the flat boat with the gentle sway under our feet and wail of birds overhead.
“If we break up, at least you can say you learned something,” I say, and we both laugh, and the seagulls wail overhead. They were wailing with us, all joy and triumph. What did they know! What did they know?
(fig. 2) There Are Four THUMS
They look like tiny cities, so close to the shore, close enough that after drinks and karaoke with coworkers, instead of going back to the hotel, it feels good to sit on the beach and think about swimming out there. The biggest island is lit up in vivid reds and blues and greens like a casino, like a club, like a child’s drawing of an island, the proportions wrong, everything too square. Silhouettes of palm trees make dark little Xs across the wash of color like on postcards from somewhere tropical. Wish you were here, they say.
Distance is measured in time and not miles in California, so I guess how long it would take to get there. Half an hour? More than that? There are six hours between you and me, depending on traffic. I am on a beach and you are home and we are in that gray space where we know we need counseling but have not started it, where you have not moved out and I sit in my car until I think you are asleep. Where I don’t want to talk to you but I do want to talk to you, where I am glad to be away and wish you were here, feelings flipping every time I inhale, exhale. I call you, tap your face in the contacts list and listen to the ring, want you to pick up and then don’t want you to pick up and then want you to pick up.
“There’s a party island in the harbor,” I say when you answer.
“Are you drunk?”
Did I wake you up or is this how it sounds when you talk to me now?
“No. Yes. Just like, a regular amount.”
It is hard to tell waves from sighs out here.
“I think I could swim out there. Maybe even walk. When’s low tide?”
“Those islands aren’t real,” you say. “They’re just oil rigs named after dead astronauts.”
In the morning, when I am hungover, something snaps into place and I miss you less than I did last night.
(fig. 3) Alameda Wasn’t an Island until 1902
It is an island now but it was a peninsula once, carved away from the rest of the land and reconnected with bridges and tunnels. The transcontinental railroad ended here, there is a plaque on a bus bench next to a gas station that says so, the train tracks buried somewhere under the street where I live, where we used to live but now it is just me.
When I come home it is to no one, it is awful and it is a relief, the feelings slam against each other when I come through the door. My things creep into the spaces that used to be yours, piles of my clothes and books and mail spreading through the gaps where furniture used to be, where you used to be.
There is a ferry here, too. It is bigger and the space between the island and the city is greater, the waves rougher. From the water, I can see where they dumped dirt in the Bay to grow the island, new land for runways and hangars, piers to park aircraft carriers. No one uses them anymore. Grass grows in the cracks that lace the runways, nature takes back a place it did not make. The Bay will swallow it all someday. The dirt cannot hold the weight, the island is sinking and the water is rising.
Jessica Dawn lives on an island in the San Francisco Bay with her very old and very charming dog. Her work has appeared in HAD, and she is currently writing her first novel. You can find her on Twitter at @JuskaJames.
