I cut water with a knife held steadily to the centre of my palm, by a white strip of cloth wrapped around it ensuring the handle clung firmly; these elaborate precautions because you trusted the knife more than my hand. Your hand can lose grip in high waves, and the knife must not be snatched away. I asked by whom, and the old woman replied: from ill spirited waves. But why white? It is a colour pungent to evil. Most people wouldn’t understand the procedures of warding off ailments. The old woman was a reader of auras, and she knew well of latching – these that despised the scents of salt, the abundance of which saturated the seas. We boarded the dinghy meant to carry us to the centre of my cure – surreal medication – but old women generally knew better from having walked the planet longer; the one with me had walked several. Tip the blade to the water as we go further, drive the blade deeper till the shaft is fully immersed. Cut the water like you would slice open a vein. Hold your hand steadfast fighting any urge to be pulled into the delusively pleading waves tugging at your hand and listen, instead, to the howling over the weeping. A short while later drawing a neat slit across the face of what seemed like a broad sheet of sky holding goblets of white lies, I awaited the howl, the cry, the pine but all that echoed into the thinness were sounds of a whimpering motor, larking of gulls overhead, and humming of the sea in séance; silence from the blurring helm of the docks in the distance and the whitening of the old woman’s eyes Previously published in Mediterranean Poetry