Waves
Two
The waves curl like your bottom lip, and you’re saying something, muttering like the inland rush of the tide murmuring over rocks. An anchor hangs from your neck, heavy as the heart beneath it, locked inside your sunken chest. I see you in your petticoats, all ruffled like the edges of kelp or the fan-like skirts of jellyfish. You billow as though underwater, as though every part of your skinny frame is a sail.
‘Joshua,’ you say, and the howling wind that dashes along the flats of the cliffs steals your voice away. It is you and that sprinting wind against me. ‘Joshua. She’s gone.’
I nod my head, and watch the tears, that juice squeezed out of amber eyes as hard as diamonds, run into the rivulets draining out to sea. I watch as you lean in that direction, secretly yearning for the empty unknown beyond the horizon and underneath the churning endlessness.
You’ve woken up.
‘Joshua,’ you say, and the howling wind that dashes along the flats of the cliffs steals your voice away. It is you and that sprinting wind against me. ‘Joshua. She’s gone.’
I nod my head, and watch the tears, that juice squeezed out of amber eyes as hard as diamonds, run into the rivulets draining out to sea. I watch as you lean in that direction, secretly yearning for the empty unknown beyond the horizon and underneath the churning endlessness.
You’ve woken up.