Soaked in salt and sand and sun, I wiggle my swollen dehydrated tongue around my mouth. It is like a dried-up worm searching for damp soil on hot asphalt, clumsily crawling over my molars, pushing blindly into the flesh of my cheek, before falling limp against my front teeth.
Blood rushes cold from my head to the earth beneath me and back again, washing me in a dizzy daydream of watercolor paints.
I feel raw and blindingly naked- like a scab picked three times over. Sick and shiny,
desperate to be wound or flesh,
Damned in between.
I stand with the inscrutable sea before me and the tame tap of land behind, parched and wasting from indecision.
The seagulls are laughing at my inability to take a step, safe from the sky, ignorant to the impossible nature of being born in both stream and sound.
The ocean waves wrap me in its arms like a swaddled infant, rocking me to the rhythm of its heart.
Serenity never sweeter.
Enveloped fully and accepted wholly.
But the blankets grow heavy and are quick to suffocate if one grows too tired.
It is easy to drink its tears when yours flow so seamlessly between them, but the salt of the sea will inevitably pickle your heart, leaving a shriveled soul, beaten down by waves, again&again&again, until you do not remember the sky.
Land promises of tepid tap water, crystal clear, still as stone, refreshing and confined to glass
or tub
or pool
A reflection of endless possibility
In abundance and waiting in adoration.
Controlled by your command until a faucet is left open. The false sense of security of seltzer and fluoride and bubble bath, stripped away, leaving you to drown in water,
pure and clean
Eventually, the tap will make me sick, spewing bile through my rotting teeth.
The salt water will preserve me, body and soul, in a reliquary of melancholic lullabies.
The house will flood.
The ocean will take me.
And so, I decide to stand here under the sun.
A star on fire.
Burning alone.
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