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.