ashes from the sea

Quick twenty minute one based on a photo I saw on @theslowtraveler’s instagram page! Raw and unrefined piece here, but it was nice to just write as a break from reading/schoolwork.

At first touch, salt scraping on your skin, the sea is cold. Your feet sink into the sand with the barest impression, a fleeting moment of dark wetness that echoes each step. The water is so clear that the only border is the latticework of sea foam, white delicately trimming each wave. Sunlight, warm on your neck, slants effortlessly across the horizon, and it smooths across the planes of your face.

With the second touch, your fingers skimming the crest of the waves, collecting their lace under your nails, the water hums. It warms under you, matching the heat of your blood, and the sea swirls around your wrists, eddies at your ankles, reaches for your chest. Until at last, the water surges into your open mouth and fills the bones inside you that are hollow — the ones that twist inside you as thorned brambles in the woods.

Your third touch is final: the magic of threes spinning gold and translucent in the sky. Flaxen hair turns black, lungs shrivel and dry, skin to scales to smoke, as though the red life in you now bleeds clear, as though the you who was alive is now eternal, and above, the sunlight turns so white-hot and pure, all you breathe is the air of stars.

The sea is empty, but still, it remains cold and beautiful while it waits for another touch. As the tide reels back, the only thing that lingers in the water is salt and sea foam, like ashes after fire.