waste, the life she didn’t do much to protect or save.
Everything without a name, burned like a cigarette lit to be put out on her thigh.
She had finally accepted everything. Summarized as such:
Once upon a time a young preteen sought danger because that foolish person thought danger asked for nothing in return. Risk was simple. Risk was face value.
She never understood that danger would inevitably require a life. It took hers because she hadn’t been careful enough.
The stage, the final stage, lives passing on like the shark fins poking through the cooling waters.
If she could, she would feel his face. If she could, she would run her own hand across the sockets where her eyes had once been; if she could, she would separate herself from this body.
If she could, but she couldn’t because the small part of feeling that remained had a very physical connection. The ghosts in place, the ghosts she could hear calling her name, speaking beyond speech, beyond sound, faulting her for yet another fault, she ignored because they simply couldn’t understand.
She must tend to his burial.
She must feed the sharks.
“Are we having fun?”
HIS TURN
This is the turn where he continues to fight back and gathers all the shards. There are as many as she thinks there should be to put him in a positive light.
By that you can expect a lot. With each shard she places him in heroic situations:
He fights the shark that had watched them from the start. And wins.
He swims to the horizon and pulls back a rope bridge. And they walk it over the horizon, back to their still-beating hearts.
He swims circles around the sharks and gets them to cannibalize each other.
He builds a second coffin for her and they both sleep side-by-side.
He freely controls the temperature of the sea.
He makes sense of the nonsense in their lives. He tells her that this was all just a dream, and maybe, depending on how traumatic this had been, a nightmare, and she wakes up.
It’s all part of his study.
She wakes up and feels so much better.
Key word: feel.
He makes her feel again.
Say goodbye to numbness.
He makes death as distant as possible. But even she can’t completely imagine how that might be possible.
The one that works best is the one where he gathers the light and places the moon back on its perch. It is the one where he kicks the sky back up to its typically impossible-to-reach distance.
He places her on his back, tells her to grip on, and paddles back to the coffin. In that coffin, they sit and enjoy. They watch as the sky becomes a real sky, full of stars, the moon looking like it had never been broken. Their senses return and they share a perfect moment.
Demise sticks to its ocean depths.
They share the dream of a starry night.
By dawn, they let go. She figures if it must be over, it ends at once, together, with a single breath, a single blink of an eye. Most of all, she imagines him as a hero.
Her hero.
HER TURN
Acceptance, all along. Each turn of a thought led to the inevitable.
Accept the impossible. Deny it and admit defeat.
Restrict and remain closed to the possibilities and you let demise infect your senses. Soon you feel numb, muted—a life being wasted. A person has fun because they feel.
“Are we having fun?” she shouted.
The ghosts were there to respond.
Their replies may have been yes, but the majority would say no. The ghosts, the few that posed as her demons, began to disappear. They concluded their own passing, and perhaps they took with them a piece of her peril.
She felt the pressure, the burden, lifting, and yet she could not change the fact that she must face this alone. Seeing off someone you knew, someone you cared for, more than yourself.
Some would arrive and some would leave, but the
Everything without a name, burned like a cigarette lit to be put out on her thigh.
She had finally accepted everything. Summarized as such:
Once upon a time a young preteen sought danger because that foolish person thought danger asked for nothing in return. Risk was simple. Risk was face value.
She never understood that danger would inevitably require a life. It took hers because she hadn’t been careful enough.
The stage, the final stage, lives passing on like the shark fins poking through the cooling waters.
If she could, she would feel his face. If she could, she would run her own hand across the sockets where her eyes had once been; if she could, she would separate herself from this body.
If she could, but she couldn’t because the small part of feeling that remained had a very physical connection. The ghosts in place, the ghosts she could hear calling her name, speaking beyond speech, beyond sound, faulting her for yet another fault, she ignored because they simply couldn’t understand.
She must tend to his burial.
She must feed the sharks.
“Are we having fun?”
HIS TURN
This is the turn where he continues to fight back and gathers all the shards. There are as many as she thinks there should be to put him in a positive light.
By that you can expect a lot. With each shard she places him in heroic situations:
He fights the shark that had watched them from the start. And wins.
He swims to the horizon and pulls back a rope bridge. And they walk it over the horizon, back to their still-beating hearts.
He swims circles around the sharks and gets them to cannibalize each other.
He builds a second coffin for her and they both sleep side-by-side.
He freely controls the temperature of the sea.
He makes sense of the nonsense in their lives. He tells her that this was all just a dream, and maybe, depending on how traumatic this had been, a nightmare, and she wakes up.
It’s all part of his study.
She wakes up and feels so much better.
Key word: feel.
He makes her feel again.
Say goodbye to numbness.
He makes death as distant as possible. But even she can’t completely imagine how that might be possible.
The one that works best is the one where he gathers the light and places the moon back on its perch. It is the one where he kicks the sky back up to its typically impossible-to-reach distance.
He places her on his back, tells her to grip on, and paddles back to the coffin. In that coffin, they sit and enjoy. They watch as the sky becomes a real sky, full of stars, the moon looking like it had never been broken. Their senses return and they share a perfect moment.
Demise sticks to its ocean depths.
They share the dream of a starry night.
By dawn, they let go. She figures if it must be over, it ends at once, together, with a single breath, a single blink of an eye. Most of all, she imagines him as a hero.
Her hero.
HER TURN
Acceptance, all along. Each turn of a thought led to the inevitable.
Accept the impossible. Deny it and admit defeat.
Restrict and remain closed to the possibilities and you let demise infect your senses. Soon you feel numb, muted—a life being wasted. A person has fun because they feel.
“Are we having fun?” she shouted.
The ghosts were there to respond.
Their replies may have been yes, but the majority would say no. The ghosts, the few that posed as her demons, began to disappear. They concluded their own passing, and perhaps they took with them a piece of her peril.
She felt the pressure, the burden, lifting, and yet she could not change the fact that she must face this alone. Seeing off someone you knew, someone you cared for, more than yourself.
Some would arrive and some would leave, but the
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