Compression

Sucking air through a pinhole from inside a sealed jar

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.

Breathing Smoke

There are boats in the distance. Small ones, barely visible in the starlight. They have no idea you're there.

Anew, Once More

There was a flood. That, you remember. A flood that wiped everything away--you didn't realize how little was left until you had finally pulled yourself up to walk, to find something, somewhere. You remember the dull, aching pain of your stump dotting the trail you walked with red specks. That's how you knew there was nothing. Just a flat land, surrounded by the glassy field of water. An island you wore down with footsteps, walking around and around.

As the sun pulled itself out of the waves and filled the sky with white, things began making sense again. It was a long process but your stump was closing, germinating and sweetly growing into a soft stem. You think you can see it budding.

You dip your feet into the water, feeling the wind inflate your lungs to pink.