ghosts, they would always be there, watching and waiting for what they couldn’t let go of in life.
Much of what they held onto is what they denied, what caused them great anger, something they bargained for, or something they outright feared. The ghosts held on because they denied it from the start. So then, the reader accepts it no matter the unfortunate ending to an already unfortunate tale.
Accept that she had to let him go in order to loosen her own grip. Sadness isn’t all she felt. What she couldn’t imagine, the reader of this tale might offer a hand, suggesting alternatives to how the tale can be told. For this telling at least, she must step out of the coffin. She must take to the shark-infested waters, the water that once again began to cool into a freeze. Blind to all sense, she will step in and envision herself standing on water.
And it would be all she saw.
Burden layered the body that had been his, the body she had borrowed, in the texture of the coffin. The texture of velvet and that of a tender embrace cradled his body, the one she could no longer cradle.
The shark that directed is the shark that watched as she pushed the coffin away. A pretend breath and then that one gentle push…
And the lapsing moment, one that goes on for way too long but then it might not have been very long at all:
She was the one that treated it as forever.
After forever lengthened to the shark swimming with the coffin trailing it, she stood still on the water.
After three steps, the water below her feet turned to ice.
After that, she stepped on shark fins, fighting off the inhibition. She tempted them. Go ahead and bite.
Of course, what she imagined to be sharks might have been nothing but frozen waves jutting up like pointed rocks.
For this to work, she continues as our point-of-view, and because she is our means of seeing the story to its end, she really does feed the sharks and it is treated with surprise when the sharks do not bite, perhaps full or lacking an appetite.
She had to continue on her own.
There wouldn’t be a sudden end.
HIS TURN
She counts the steps she takes as one year’s time together. In a place where time is meaningless, the duration that might have been “the rest of their lives” looks a whole lot like this:
But then they were already dead, and this line would be most acceptable as an indication of how much time they had together.
Her imagination filled in the blanks.
Everything changes. Nothing is true.
The water whispers, the depths shout.
She is a different person.
He always was.
HER TURN
In the end, his turns became hers.
Her swimming had become a walking.
A long walking. The walk was her penance.
The walk was her search for him.
This tale had come to its conclusion.
It was an emptiness that she accepted.
The emptiness can be seen on the page.
The blank of the page is death’s take.
What remains is what a life leaves behind.
The more you accept the less exists on the page.
HIS TURN
She imagines his last turn as flat desert terrain built on a dead, frozen sea that would never again thaw.
She imagines that she has been walking for her entire life.
She imagines an expanse of time where she carries the zest for life. It looks like a tiny coffin,
Much of what they held onto is what they denied, what caused them great anger, something they bargained for, or something they outright feared. The ghosts held on because they denied it from the start. So then, the reader accepts it no matter the unfortunate ending to an already unfortunate tale.
Accept that she had to let him go in order to loosen her own grip. Sadness isn’t all she felt. What she couldn’t imagine, the reader of this tale might offer a hand, suggesting alternatives to how the tale can be told. For this telling at least, she must step out of the coffin. She must take to the shark-infested waters, the water that once again began to cool into a freeze. Blind to all sense, she will step in and envision herself standing on water.
And it would be all she saw.
Burden layered the body that had been his, the body she had borrowed, in the texture of the coffin. The texture of velvet and that of a tender embrace cradled his body, the one she could no longer cradle.
The shark that directed is the shark that watched as she pushed the coffin away. A pretend breath and then that one gentle push…
And the lapsing moment, one that goes on for way too long but then it might not have been very long at all:
She was the one that treated it as forever.
After forever lengthened to the shark swimming with the coffin trailing it, she stood still on the water.
After three steps, the water below her feet turned to ice.
After that, she stepped on shark fins, fighting off the inhibition. She tempted them. Go ahead and bite.
Of course, what she imagined to be sharks might have been nothing but frozen waves jutting up like pointed rocks.
For this to work, she continues as our point-of-view, and because she is our means of seeing the story to its end, she really does feed the sharks and it is treated with surprise when the sharks do not bite, perhaps full or lacking an appetite.
She had to continue on her own.
There wouldn’t be a sudden end.
HIS TURN
She counts the steps she takes as one year’s time together. In a place where time is meaningless, the duration that might have been “the rest of their lives” looks a whole lot like this:
But then they were already dead, and this line would be most acceptable as an indication of how much time they had together.
Her imagination filled in the blanks.
Everything changes. Nothing is true.
The water whispers, the depths shout.
She is a different person.
He always was.
HER TURN
In the end, his turns became hers.
Her swimming had become a walking.
A long walking. The walk was her penance.
The walk was her search for him.
This tale had come to its conclusion.
It was an emptiness that she accepted.
The emptiness can be seen on the page.
The blank of the page is death’s take.
What remains is what a life leaves behind.
The more you accept the less exists on the page.
HIS TURN
She imagines his last turn as flat desert terrain built on a dead, frozen sea that would never again thaw.
She imagines that she has been walking for her entire life.
She imagines an expanse of time where she carries the zest for life. It looks like a tiny coffin,
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