Loud and Ringing
the bells
My bare feet graze over those bald pebbles. They’re pale as the rising sun. The water is crisp, a certain coolness that heightens the senses and sends a shiver coursing down the spine and forearms in a spurt of urgent vitality. The gulls parade, screaming more than singing. The loose knit draped along my shoulders ripples in the winds that storm through here, causing the reeds rooted deep in the dunes to rustle in a natural symphony. Sands shifted. I shuddered.
I move farther out, testing how cold the water exactly was. The bottoms of my jeans stick to my ankles and my toes curl around the fragments of a once beautiful shell. My heart swells. Thousands of has-beens were being walked upon and crushed by yet another guilty has-been. My mind redirects itself to the present, focusing on the harbor and the water as I move out further, beckoning into the rolling tides. White foam caressed my shins. Salt stung my eyes and I wasn’t sure if I was crying or if the water had sprayed into my eyes.
When nothing surmounted to my cheeks, I lugged the left corner of my mouth to something of a point to make a wry smirk at best. The push and pull entranced me and I stood there. Thinking about nothing and everything all at once. Serene. Everything. Nothing.
Brutality.
Nothing.
Clouds speck the horizon farther than eyes can strain to see. The tides are slightly more vicious than they were in the temperate summer and the short autumn. Everything is so bleak and lively all at the same time. It’s quizzically discerning that I feel nothing. There’s a difference between thinking and feeling. I think about everything. I feel nothing except for the tangible push and pull of the tides lulling me to venture. To go.
It’s like those sirens. The sirens are calling me.
I take a step.
I think.
Another step.
Think harder.
And I stop.
My breathing is unexpectedly choppy and a slight turn of the head directs my attention to the shore. A random man in a windbreaker stoops down to examine a large conch shell. His silvery hair is thin, but not thin enough to be a lost cause. I pivot, the water now at my knee, I fight the pull of the tide.
The man finally realizes my presence and stares for several seconds in confusion. It’s not unwarranted, it is the first of December and I’m out in the freezing water while the surf is at its strongest. Unrelenting, nature is, consistently picking and choosing the fittest of the species. “Run!” the man’s frail voice echoes faintly. He jogs to the waterline as if that’s going to pull me into the safety of white sandy shore.
“I… I…” I struggle. It’s no use.
It stings. Everything stings as my feet are flung above my head. That lull of the open sea is dragging me further out. A high pitched ring is drumming behind my head in a stampeding fashion as I tumble in the murky water. Time moves sickeningly slow as the sediments racing around my field of vision move along with the current. Air. My lungs burn and I can’t find the will to crane my neck that little way…
I gasp, the wind stinging more so than the salt water. I collect my breath in some sort of a haze as I’m stooped under the crest of another wave. I’ve lived by the sea my entire life and nothing like this has ever happened.
Again.
This time, I can keep my eyes open, but I still can’t fight it. There’s nothing left to fight for and I see this as my opportunity. And so as I continue to thrust forward and backwards into the blackness of the ocean, I begin the slow strategizing of my endgame. Bubbles trail from my nose as I am reluctantly forced to the bright light of the surface…
The bells. I can’t stop those bells clanging against my skull. My lips move and I’m sure I’m muttering it over and over as I pitifully tread. “The bells.”… “The bells.”… “The bells.”
They’re unearthly. So tantalizingly sweet. My bell is tolling with the chime of thousands of angels calling me to the depths. One final wave crests, approaching me and promising that final blow to send me home…
Again.
There’s finality to it as the air leaves me.
I move farther out, testing how cold the water exactly was. The bottoms of my jeans stick to my ankles and my toes curl around the fragments of a once beautiful shell. My heart swells. Thousands of has-beens were being walked upon and crushed by yet another guilty has-been. My mind redirects itself to the present, focusing on the harbor and the water as I move out further, beckoning into the rolling tides. White foam caressed my shins. Salt stung my eyes and I wasn’t sure if I was crying or if the water had sprayed into my eyes.
When nothing surmounted to my cheeks, I lugged the left corner of my mouth to something of a point to make a wry smirk at best. The push and pull entranced me and I stood there. Thinking about nothing and everything all at once. Serene. Everything. Nothing.
Brutality.
Nothing.
Clouds speck the horizon farther than eyes can strain to see. The tides are slightly more vicious than they were in the temperate summer and the short autumn. Everything is so bleak and lively all at the same time. It’s quizzically discerning that I feel nothing. There’s a difference between thinking and feeling. I think about everything. I feel nothing except for the tangible push and pull of the tides lulling me to venture. To go.
It’s like those sirens. The sirens are calling me.
I take a step.
I think.
Another step.
Think harder.
And I stop.
My breathing is unexpectedly choppy and a slight turn of the head directs my attention to the shore. A random man in a windbreaker stoops down to examine a large conch shell. His silvery hair is thin, but not thin enough to be a lost cause. I pivot, the water now at my knee, I fight the pull of the tide.
The man finally realizes my presence and stares for several seconds in confusion. It’s not unwarranted, it is the first of December and I’m out in the freezing water while the surf is at its strongest. Unrelenting, nature is, consistently picking and choosing the fittest of the species. “Run!” the man’s frail voice echoes faintly. He jogs to the waterline as if that’s going to pull me into the safety of white sandy shore.
“I… I…” I struggle. It’s no use.
It stings. Everything stings as my feet are flung above my head. That lull of the open sea is dragging me further out. A high pitched ring is drumming behind my head in a stampeding fashion as I tumble in the murky water. Time moves sickeningly slow as the sediments racing around my field of vision move along with the current. Air. My lungs burn and I can’t find the will to crane my neck that little way…
I gasp, the wind stinging more so than the salt water. I collect my breath in some sort of a haze as I’m stooped under the crest of another wave. I’ve lived by the sea my entire life and nothing like this has ever happened.
Again.
This time, I can keep my eyes open, but I still can’t fight it. There’s nothing left to fight for and I see this as my opportunity. And so as I continue to thrust forward and backwards into the blackness of the ocean, I begin the slow strategizing of my endgame. Bubbles trail from my nose as I am reluctantly forced to the bright light of the surface…
The bells. I can’t stop those bells clanging against my skull. My lips move and I’m sure I’m muttering it over and over as I pitifully tread. “The bells.”… “The bells.”… “The bells.”
They’re unearthly. So tantalizingly sweet. My bell is tolling with the chime of thousands of angels calling me to the depths. One final wave crests, approaching me and promising that final blow to send me home…
Again.
There’s finality to it as the air leaves me.