After my father died, I laid his body below the boat’s deck. I returned to the main deck, careful not to look—not to waste what was left of the water with salty tears. As I sat there, that relentless sun broke my skin. 

I hesitated and stalled, but the burning demands of the sun forced my hand. I went below deck again—careful not to glance—and laid in a cot until the cool night took over. I checked the cask for food. It was near gone. A strip of salt pork that would last another day. Take into consideration these conditions. I ate the strip and slept, the food lulling me. Please, consider these conditions.

Seabirds woke me with their screams, and God, that smell. That smell corrupted the air. My father was rotting. I found a tarp and brought it below deck. I covered the body with the tarp, ensuring my focus remained on the blueness of the tarp. And yes, I could have thrown him off the boat. But how could I? How could I treat him like fishermen treat those undesirable catches? Don’t tell me I should have thrown him off. Don’t tell me you would have. A man like him deserved a proper death.

The midday sun was already seeping into my skin when I was done covering the body, forcing me to stay below deck with it. I sat on the cot and stared at the now-empty food cask. The body was about fifteen feet from my cot. Should he die in vain? Was a son to die so soon to his father’s death? 

A dying rat crawled quietly under the cot, but I heard it. I caught it with my bare hands and took up my knife, slitting its throat. It squealed with what I took to be pain. It quickly died. I removed its skin, stiff fur clinging loosely to it. I took to the rest of the rat and ate what I could off of it. I placed its remaining bones and skin on the floor and stared at the tarp. I vomited.

I remember wanting to be disgusted.

I don’t remember sleeping that night. 

The body had a stronger smell in the morning, where the sun had already burned the floor. The smell drew me. Its shape was so close under the tarp. I regret, and in that moment regretted, not looking at my father soon after he died. Was my last memory of him to be his chest locking up? Was I to only remember that cold unease on his face? I lifted the tarp and looked at the body. Its torso shined with a frothy golden oil, discolored like a mature lilac rose, preserved in some sort of calm.

 I couldn’t stop staring. I couldn’t. I took out my knife. I knew my hunger. And yes, my teeth crawled through its soft flesh, but was I to give up my father’s sacrifice? I ate it all, but I did no wrong. Was I to kill myself slowly, cowardly in the middle of the Atlantic? Cruel sun, tell me I did no wrong!