Tuesday, April 10, 2012

the island

My beach was beautiful; I'm not bragging it's just an obvious, accepted fact. The sands were clean and white and devoid of seashells or litter or anything. The wind had been ethereal, carrying sweet fresh smells and sounds across the bay. Birds sometimes scratched love notes to me in the sand and then flew up into the endless horizon, across an ocean that went on into the distance forever. But that was so long ago.

Now birds never came to my shores. Fish didn't even want to swim close to me. I was/am alone and I felt utterly helpless and locked away from everything. Trash lined the previously pristine natural beach. The trees had been cut down and replaced with ugly huge condos.

The waves rushed against my sides, with nourishing but chastising strokes. They caressed my ribs firmly and I tasted the sea salt as the water splashed up over me. I kept my eyes closed and my heart closed tighter. Tiny streams of oil and petroleum oozed through the massive ocean and inched towards me. I tried to squirm away from the grease as I floated through the disgusting sludge of this new world.

I felt their feet before I really saw them walk across me. And then I heard their voices, sharp and shrill, screaming to fill the silence of their minds and my shores. Why do humans have to be so loud just to drown out any potential for a genuine thought? Why are they such chatterboxes? What would be so bad about just sitting and listening to the sounds of the ocean, their thoughts, the beach, the bird shit splattering over the gravel man-made path, the grumble of cars in the distance, the wail of horns and music and television and everything of the city, the crying of babies as they overpopulate themselves, destroying the planet and the air and their minds, the screams of murder victims- okay nevermind, I get it now.

The humans walked across me. The female human took off her shoes and laughed at nothing important. She kicked her shoes into the sand and looked back at him, her hair in her face, the wind twirling her skirt over her calves. The man's temperature rose when her shoes flew off and his heart beat faster. He reached his hands around her waist. She froze at his touch. He pulled her to him and smelled her hair.

She turned back to him and pushed him gently away. He looked down at her and she looked up at him, quizzically, beggingly. She asked him a question. Her voice rose up at the end. Her eyebrows met each other. She paused and hesitated near him, hovering in hope and also despair. His heals dug into me and his weight shifted.

He brushed her arms away from his, dropping her hands, and muttered something downwards into the sand, something defensive, something cruel and selfish, something in his own best interest, lacking empathy for her.

She screamed something horrible and cruel as loud as she could, hitting as low as possible, cutting as deep into his self esteem as she could, something catty and filled with malice. Her voice was high and angry. Her hands crossed each other breasts, her arms tight against her nipples. Her eyes narrowed.

He threw up his hands and turned from her. He walked back towards the parking lot where the sludgy gas guzzling suv sat waiting, warm and nestled in dependence. As he walked away from her, his footsteps made no sound in the soft malleable sand. With his back to her and the sound of the sea below, his angry muttering was all but drowned out.

She sat on my sand and breathed out heavily, a humanoid pant, she gave into the wash of the waves and the feel of my solid ground and let her self escape into tears. Sobbing and shaking, she sat alone on my once beautiful beach.

Dedicated to Ross Parsons.

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