The Swells

It's high tide as they leave you on the beach.  Air and sand scrape your muscles, ribs, heart.  The smell of salt as ocean waves lap against you.  You tremble.  The aching reminds you that you're breathing.

It's a feeling you can never forget, and will always cherish.

Diagnosis

As you crack like an egg in front of them, they seize your body, prying the pieces apart with long silver tools.

Like surgeons they tease apart every fiber, every sliver of fat, every thread of your nerves.  They see your raw, bleeding body, naked in the light.  The air shocks your senses, and you lay gasping as they work.

O O

All of the hairline cracks veining your china body.  Hissing as sand trickled through, sprinkling a trail behind you.  All of the hairline cracks, forming a code.  A code everyone could read.

Surrounded by eyes darting between you and the trail of sand.  Back and forth, holes that gaped as their fibers contracted.

All of the hairline cracks finally connected across your face.  Shards crashing, sand sparkling under the fluorescent light.  Everyone heard, eyes darting, everyone saw.  Surrounded by eyes, surrounded by light.

Marionette

Winter came, and you fell asleep.

As the snow fell, you slept and were buried in the drifts. When the white sun glowed, the snow crawled into the ocean, and you lay there, frozen in the cold. At last, you crack open your eyes, fragmenting the ice over your lids. You stir. Your skin frozen, clear porcelain and smooth. You lay there for months, cracking your chest to breathe.

The air laces your lungs with frost. From where you lay, you can see thick grooves in the beach--there were boats here. While you were asleep.

Where are you?

You breathe. Your ball-jointed limbs jerk, unfamiliar with their stiff movements. The stem of your stump hardened, with dots of white bone where the buds used to be. You breathe, and slowly you rise.

Letters, memories of voices as you slept below the snow. Where are you? they asked. Voices lost in the rolling sea. For a moment you falter, sinking with your elbows in the sand, your china head heavy. It hurts, but you rise, and trembling under the weight of gravity you totter to your feet.

There. A boat on the horizon. So far away but clearly heading in your direction. Blinking, ice falls from your face and facets in the light.