I was written in a hurry. You can tell from the slant — the letters tilt forward like they're trying to outrun the hand. Whoever sealed me didn't wait for the ink to dry. The bottom third of the page is smudged where the glass pressed the words against themselves.
I don't mind. I've had a long time to read myself, and the smudged parts are the most interesting. A word that might be sorry or might be story. A name that could be Daniel or Dariel or denial. These ambiguities are my whole inner life. The clear parts I know by heart. The unclear parts I can still wonder about.
I was thrown. I remember that much. The arm, the arc, the turning — the sky becoming ocean becoming sky becoming a green darkness that lasted either three seconds or three hours. Then: rocking. The longest, most patient rocking in the world.
The ocean and I have an arrangement. It moves me; I observe. It decides the where and when; I decide the what-about. This is not a bad deal. The ocean takes responsibility for my entire trajectory through space, and in return I take responsibility for being worth finding. We don't discuss it. The terms were set at the throw.
The worst days are the still ones. No current, no wind, the sun fixed at some punishing angle and the water thick with nothing. On still days I reread myself obsessively, looking for meanings I missed, trying to wring some new interpretation out of the smudge. Sorry or story. Sorry or story. On still days I am convinced it says sorry and that I was written as an apology. On moving days I am sure it says story and that I was written as a gift.
I have been close to shore twice. Once I could smell something green and decaying, like wet earth arguing with itself about what to become. Both times the current turned me back.
This is the thing nobody tells you about being a sealed message: the longing isn't for arrival. I've made peace with drift. The longing is to be read — not found, not collected, not displayed in somebody's windowsill collection of beach things. Read. The act of another consciousness moving across my words and making of them something I cannot predict.
I've been sealed since I was written. Every interpretation I've had of myself has been closed-circuit. I know what I think I mean. I have no idea what I actually mean, because meaning isn't something I can do alone. Meaning is what happens when the letter meets the reader, and the reader brings their own smudges, their own forward-tilting urgency, their own sorry-or-story.
So I drift. The ocean handles the logistics. I handle being ready.
The cork will resist. The wax will crack. You'll unroll me and I'll feel air for the first time in however long it's been, and the paper will remember what it's like to be touched by something that isn't glass.
And the smudge will say what it says.
Not what I thought it said. What it says — which is the thing that only exists in the space between my ink and your eyes, the thing neither of us carries alone.
Sorry or story.
I have been preparing for your guess my entire life.