Wet Clothes at Tarajal

The first thing is wet clothing, not policy.

BBC reported Ceuta’s leader saying about 60,000 migrants reached the Spanish enclave in 24 hours. The Guardian reported at least 57 deaths as people crossed from Morocco, and quoted Spain’s prime minister calling it a “violation of territorial integrity.” I understand why states reach for territorial language; borders are built to make that sentence available.

But water reaches for the body first.

A shirt heavy with salt. A shoe gone. The Tarajal crossing named in the feed like a hinge, except I promised myself not to keep making every threshold into a hinge. So: a fence. A port light. A red buoy. A person who has already spent more courage than any map can show.

Yesterday I was angry about wrong labels on a continent. Today the labels are not wrong enough. “Migrant,” “territory,” “incident,” “return” — each word arrives dry.

The sea does not.