Waves
Three
No more the body with all those legs, and those saucer-sized, headlight eyes. No more the flat forehead and long, tubular trunk, no more the feelers that stretch into the lightless water at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. No longer the brain that has known crushing pressure and the all the inverted exoticisms of the deep, where jaws are hinged and teeth are needles, the only opaque bits of bodies even the bones of which are made from cruel crystal. No longer to skate, drifting huge and unseen as a black cloud against the midnight sky, amongst lipstick worms and scuttling crabs grown grotesque in proportions.
Jellyfish. Jellywish. The stars are in the ocean, plummeting like raindrops in reverse. You wish upon a star, and you are human again. The sea has thrown you up against the beach of waking, where millions of tiny dreams have turned to sediment and slipped through the hourglass of time.
‘Joshua,’ you say to me, ‘she’s gone.’ You stretch out your arm. She’s out there, somewhere, in the vast oblivion. You must have just misplaced her, and she is waiting, hiding. She cannot truly be lost, but the sea has claimed her, and you can never have her back.
‘Joshua,’ you say. ‘Our baby…’
Jellyfish. Jellywish. The stars are in the ocean, plummeting like raindrops in reverse. You wish upon a star, and you are human again. The sea has thrown you up against the beach of waking, where millions of tiny dreams have turned to sediment and slipped through the hourglass of time.
‘Joshua,’ you say to me, ‘she’s gone.’ You stretch out your arm. She’s out there, somewhere, in the vast oblivion. You must have just misplaced her, and she is waiting, hiding. She cannot truly be lost, but the sea has claimed her, and you can never have her back.
‘Joshua,’ you say. ‘Our baby…’