SHADOWY CALM
In memory of her
Count seashells. Those were the things we used to do as children. “Eight, nine, ten…” I paused momentarily. The blood vessels buried under the frost of my salty fingers slowly came to life. My sister held out a plastic sandwich bag and motioned me to deposit my findings. There was no drop of daydream in her eyes. Everything was focused on this one assortment of treasures. “That’s eleven”, the accountant in her spoke as if she was listing the sins I would need to repent. White as crockery, she held the fossil against her cheek. Her eyes squinted and she inspected the ancient engravings with the light bent to her lenses desire. “Try finding a prettier one. I like pretty ones.” There was dissatisfaction in her voice, a tremble that signaled a profound disappointment. She threw her bag inside the box and closed the lid.
It was quiet on the beach. White foam from the waves swallowed sand into the stomach of the water, uprooting enormous vines from the reef. They ended up draped on the sandy dunes like abandoned mines and novelty nets for stray jellyfish – furniture put out for collection along a fading stretch of pristine land. The air was dense. A touch of it sucked dry on my cheek, while the cold like glass of the wind cut into my skin. We faced the endless expanse of ocean. As children, there were far more things to contemplate than life. We held the belief that the linen of water kept dreams caged and tied on a leash. The more dreams it devoured, the deeper the indigo shade. It was as if it miraculously dispelled thought. My mind bled, I stuttered aloud, “wwww..Why is the ocean so blue today?” The blood transfused into her stream of consciousness. The question was for her to answer.
Once my father told me that nothing occurred without reason. Doubt was for the weak. It was a phenomenon that I always struggled to grasp. Dad was never a doubting man. He was stubborn and when challenged would strip away to the bare essence of an argument, to its core, replying with “that is just how things are”. He dictated fate as good as any watch, Shells into sand and sand into dust.
A soft breeze isolated our shivers, its wide breath coloured with tendrils of black hair escaped from their arrangement. Loose strands fell across her cheeks and nose while her thick lips dried in the foundry of the sun. The tide changed gears, its gesture tilting the opalescence of the ocean’s shallows. We felt the sensation of the world on top of our droopy shoulders while the seagulls squawked angrily at the fish. The silence killed the vapors of doubt that condensed at the rims of my imagination. She squatted on the rocks, the sand trapped between the webs of her feet exposed. Unable to withstand the madness, I whispered, “My turn to bag”. Her dark eyes were still transfixed on the indistinguishable azure thread, the ambience of infinity where blue merged with blue. She did not notice the skiff making love to the limbs of water, until she resurfaced – then she nodded. The semaphore that told me there was not a time when she didn’t let me bag.
Sharp claws glided over the opaque surface and sank into the mud like a feather dragged by lead. Her mechanical fingers mined the rich concaved tide pool exploring the microscopic graveyard of decay. Carefully she dusted them along the stony edges catching speckles of marine fossil. Her excavations were more successful than mine. The best she harvested was thirty odd coral remains. She would return with fingertips saturated by the heavy scent of mussels, clams, oysters, sea snails and starfish, the aroma of washed sediment.
On the Saturday, she sat by the porch her body veiled under a grimy light, her delicate chin glued to sturdy kneecaps, shriveled like an embryo. Anxiously she rocked back and forth, pushing her newly grown breasts against her thighs. She was twelve. Everything about it was unexpected. We were told that she would cope, but inexplicably her mind was driven awry. Sometimes I would sit with her under the guise of an old Dickens paperback and watch her soothe her pangs with supple slurs unleashed by tremulous shards of grief. It was the hardest when the tears stopped flowing and secreted under her yellow, mauve veins where her spirit disassembled and laced night with night. I had felt it before; the times when you thought you could touch her; waffle her perfume as if dewdrops in winter; but like the invisible stains on yesterday’s bleached laundry, they were still there – inerasable to time.
Clouds invaded the salted sky. We had been gone for thirty minutes. It was time to move on. Her hands spilled dregs of seawater onto the plastic membrane of the bag. The catch: just one immaculate pair of angel wings. She rinsed the carapace with the saline solution. Her innocence was absent of melancholy. This was a good catch – a pretty one.
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Everyone's being writing personal/creative pieces and posting them up... so i thought i may as well do the same.
IPPY
In memory of her
Count seashells. Those were the things we used to do as children. “Eight, nine, ten…” I paused momentarily. The blood vessels buried under the frost of my salty fingers slowly came to life. My sister held out a plastic sandwich bag and motioned me to deposit my findings. There was no drop of daydream in her eyes. Everything was focused on this one assortment of treasures. “That’s eleven”, the accountant in her spoke as if she was listing the sins I would need to repent. White as crockery, she held the fossil against her cheek. Her eyes squinted and she inspected the ancient engravings with the light bent to her lenses desire. “Try finding a prettier one. I like pretty ones.” There was dissatisfaction in her voice, a tremble that signaled a profound disappointment. She threw her bag inside the box and closed the lid.
It was quiet on the beach. White foam from the waves swallowed sand into the stomach of the water, uprooting enormous vines from the reef. They ended up draped on the sandy dunes like abandoned mines and novelty nets for stray jellyfish – furniture put out for collection along a fading stretch of pristine land. The air was dense. A touch of it sucked dry on my cheek, while the cold like glass of the wind cut into my skin. We faced the endless expanse of ocean. As children, there were far more things to contemplate than life. We held the belief that the linen of water kept dreams caged and tied on a leash. The more dreams it devoured, the deeper the indigo shade. It was as if it miraculously dispelled thought. My mind bled, I stuttered aloud, “wwww..Why is the ocean so blue today?” The blood transfused into her stream of consciousness. The question was for her to answer.
Once my father told me that nothing occurred without reason. Doubt was for the weak. It was a phenomenon that I always struggled to grasp. Dad was never a doubting man. He was stubborn and when challenged would strip away to the bare essence of an argument, to its core, replying with “that is just how things are”. He dictated fate as good as any watch, Shells into sand and sand into dust.
A soft breeze isolated our shivers, its wide breath coloured with tendrils of black hair escaped from their arrangement. Loose strands fell across her cheeks and nose while her thick lips dried in the foundry of the sun. The tide changed gears, its gesture tilting the opalescence of the ocean’s shallows. We felt the sensation of the world on top of our droopy shoulders while the seagulls squawked angrily at the fish. The silence killed the vapors of doubt that condensed at the rims of my imagination. She squatted on the rocks, the sand trapped between the webs of her feet exposed. Unable to withstand the madness, I whispered, “My turn to bag”. Her dark eyes were still transfixed on the indistinguishable azure thread, the ambience of infinity where blue merged with blue. She did not notice the skiff making love to the limbs of water, until she resurfaced – then she nodded. The semaphore that told me there was not a time when she didn’t let me bag.
Sharp claws glided over the opaque surface and sank into the mud like a feather dragged by lead. Her mechanical fingers mined the rich concaved tide pool exploring the microscopic graveyard of decay. Carefully she dusted them along the stony edges catching speckles of marine fossil. Her excavations were more successful than mine. The best she harvested was thirty odd coral remains. She would return with fingertips saturated by the heavy scent of mussels, clams, oysters, sea snails and starfish, the aroma of washed sediment.
On the Saturday, she sat by the porch her body veiled under a grimy light, her delicate chin glued to sturdy kneecaps, shriveled like an embryo. Anxiously she rocked back and forth, pushing her newly grown breasts against her thighs. She was twelve. Everything about it was unexpected. We were told that she would cope, but inexplicably her mind was driven awry. Sometimes I would sit with her under the guise of an old Dickens paperback and watch her soothe her pangs with supple slurs unleashed by tremulous shards of grief. It was the hardest when the tears stopped flowing and secreted under her yellow, mauve veins where her spirit disassembled and laced night with night. I had felt it before; the times when you thought you could touch her; waffle her perfume as if dewdrops in winter; but like the invisible stains on yesterday’s bleached laundry, they were still there – inerasable to time.
Clouds invaded the salted sky. We had been gone for thirty minutes. It was time to move on. Her hands spilled dregs of seawater onto the plastic membrane of the bag. The catch: just one immaculate pair of angel wings. She rinsed the carapace with the saline solution. Her innocence was absent of melancholy. This was a good catch – a pretty one.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everyone's being writing personal/creative pieces and posting them up... so i thought i may as well do the same.
IPPY
