The woman who wanted to be a boat

In the daytime, she lay next to the wooden boat, curving her spine to form the shape of a keel, watching the dredger paddle that lay in the hot sun. She imagined her freckles to be the small knots in wood, her spread arms to be beams, her upturned nose the prow, and as she lay, she rocked, as if in water. The scent of the harbour filled the air. She breathed in deeply, and on the outbreath thought: sapwood, scantlings, scupper, sheer line, sprit. Her neck stiffened as she visualised the boat deck, how her skin would turn to larch, pink heartwood at its core. What would her barcol hardness be? Could she withstand biological attack, the slow suck of barnacles on her side, the gribble boring through her planks? She thought again of brightwork, of how her hull would shine in the water, how cormorants would fleet by her in the surf, how she would smell like silt, like salt. She closed her eyes, and rocked.