history isn’t written by victors
because—

history is a treacherous sea, a force of nature once thought to bend to nobody. and as you stand on the sand, basking in history’s sorrow and glory, you’re nobody to the sea, your mother’s voice echoes, begging you to be cautious, to stay within her sight, to glow in the moonlight. the sea is treacherous, she says, and he never kneels.

history isn’t written by victors
because only words are written
and—

but water remembers. water never changes. water that leaves your body in salt beads when you dance in rain, beautiful and vain, and fresh water you dance for in drought, dry and pained, is one and the same. the vicious sea remembers. he remembers every victim slain, every footstep in the sand, every ship sunk. he wishes he were drunk. water aches, water heals.

history isn’t written by victors
because only words are written
and words are set in stone,
not water.

history is a sea, and your mother is silly if she truly believes the sea doesn’t bend to anybody. the sea, in all his glory, grows weak in the knees every single time the vicious moon appears, shining down on us with a soft smile, forcing him to flood the shore where you stand unsure, to strip down and bear his flesh open, where thousands of sunken skeletons lurk, unwritten yet rotten. the sea is malleable, lovely, and weak.

history isn’t written by victors because history is drawn by power, drawn by a con artist who paints virtue with venom, a moon that can and will uncover hell or sink heaven at will while shining down at us with a soft smile. and as you stand on the sand, getting drunk on moonbeam, you’re nobody to my truth, a victor’s voice echoes, reminding you you were forged out from history, a mistake never meant to be, another skeleton on the floor of the ocean, ignoring your silly mother’s warnings as you swim towards the deep, cutting through a never-ending sea, still drunk, still real, seeking proof you exist in the shape of a memory set in stone. and then you’re lost in history, floating with your arms full of the proof you sought: words in stone. the shape of memory, unmalleable yet deformed. you exist, now.

history isn’t written by victors because history is drawn by power in the shape of a vicious circle and we refuse to live drafted, like quiet mistakes in the margins. history isn’t written by victors, and we have the memory of water: we will remember even when we’re hung to dry, even when we’re left behind, even when we’re forgotten, even when the treacherous moon drowns us in these margins, even when our bodies are unwritten and our sunken souls are rotten.

our memories and words will outlive the tides of the sea because they are set in stone. they don’t rot like skeletons or bow to the moon. we will still remember in the end of time, when the sea calms down and water isn’t life anymore, when the moon submits to the pull of the shore, falls and breaks and bares her core, let the truth spill over the stones. history isn’t written by victors and the moon won’t last forever. the moon is moody, lovely, and wicked.

“o, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
that monthly changes in her circled orb.”