The Boaters
I know that scene. It’s lived in my father’s shed these many years. The image is serene,
boaters in the distance bringing down the sails in the balmy sunset. They look to be coming to shore after a day out fishing or sailing around the coast on a Sunday afternoon. My father is a painter. It soothes his crippling anxiety. He painted this scene as though he were not on that boat. As though he was watching from the shore, imagining he was out fishing with his brothers. Or out for a Sunday sail with my mother and me. As though we were picnicking on the sea. Feeding the fish. Watching dolphins. Soaking up the sun. As though we weren’t almost drowned and lucky to have arrived in Australian waters. Boat people. Arrested. Incarcerated. For our trouble of trying to stay alive by coming here.
Yvonne Sanders is a Melbourne/Naarm-based writer of long-form fiction, short stories and flash fiction. She has been published in The Victorian Writer and shortlisted in the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Award and the Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto Awards. Yvonne is also a science writer, nature lover, bushwalker and birdwatcher.
This story was shortlisted in the September 24 Monthly Micro Competition.