Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Pelting Up From The Shallows

We are, in the end, long feet. Like cornered blue canoes. Like cornered blue lagoons.

We have, as they say, the technology to drain these pools and, for a change, fill them with sand. With long feet at our disposal we could walk this solid water. Maybe, instead, tread the tiny coloured balls.

We went to the beach, you and I, and beneath cloudless climes we clambered over the rusted remnants of sea defences, the once proud monuments to fearlessness and obstinance. We clambered those hulks, you and I, and the rusty cuts did not prevent us from hurling pebbles into the sky. With our contempt for the crashing waves, we knew whose side we were on. And do you remember, as it darkened and the water retreated in short defeat, we removed our shoes and fed rust flakes through our toes?

The more we position our chairs on this beach, the more we surrender ourselves to the inevitability of death by water. At the bottom of the sea, supine at the bottom of the sea. Picked apart.

We took ourselves off, you and I, to the ice-cream stand as soon as the morning hit us. The sky in shock from the night, we walked beneath its clouds in cold fresh shoes. You said, to me, so I could barely hear you: this way, I think.

The sky has, since the beginning of true time, been a boon to sailors and the lovestruck everywhere. During the day, when the practicalities of life are enough to make us bend, the sky is our guiding light, both literally and, you know, metaphorically. Its consideration, however, stretches further with the realisation, especially to lovers, that the sky will think nothing of dimming its light to create corners and moods that, you know, us lovers can fall into and really make the most of. Thank God, as they say, for the sky in its night. The sea, on the other hand, is the bastard that swallows.

We walked quicker, absented ourselves from that beach, when we saw that the sea was coming. Do you remember how tired I was? All my moaning and groaning, my dead feet ploughing furrows into the increasingly wetter sand as the limpets and barnacles attached to my legs panicked, knowing that dry land under the guiding blazing light of the sky would be the death of them. I remember how frightened you were as I scraped them away and they turned to you, somehow, and somehow communicated through seemingly lifeless shell and indecipherable smallness how they were going to get you some night, some night while you slept. And they did get you, didn’t they? They did get you.

1 Comments:

Blogger Molly Bloom said...

The person who is cornered is the person who can then relate to someone else who is cornered.

You escaped from the beach and I did not. The crashing monster waves come closer and closer to us when we are like that, don't they?

7:52 PM  

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