The waves folded out, gracing the beach in soft blankets of blue and foamy white, tickling my toes with the rush of low tide. The land bridge separating my world from this one, stretched long into the horizon, the mainland now a speck against the ocean. Katrelle slid into the sand beside me, huffing into her hands contentedly and staring at that dot in the distance.
The place we’d come from.
...
The boxes above sit in dust and memory, weighed down by books and dreams. The teal lining of one basket. The hard plastic drawer full of colored notebooks. The leather bound journals standing on wire shelves.
Below, clothes of the present. Cotton shirts and tulle dresses that fan out like flowers. Shoes. Nine pairs of boots. Heels of sequin and sparkle.
Nothing compared to the boxes above....
Mandy’s pencil tapped rapidly on the oak coffee shop table. Beside her, the woman waiting for her order of coffees in the shop line stifled a round of aggressive hiccups. The teenager taking order’s shrill voice carried up the modern metal walls and around the small space. Mandy’s pencil tapped harder, and she turned the page of her physiology textbook. She flipped it back, rereading over a couple...
They stand, mouths agape, eyes fixed on the light and smoke in the sky. Their bodies form patterns, clustered across the beach, children darting in and out of the shapes they create. There is whooping and whistling just before the sparks flit across the sky. The energy is explosive—enough to make you forget about the fireworks. Enough to make you realize they are the fireworks....
Ba pulled gruffly on the fishing line in his hand. The line, thin as a whip of grass, shook in the morning fog and refused to come up. Ba pulled again, sensing that the struggle under the water—the struggle he couldn’t see—was a difficult one.
Perhaps his line was caught in the mouth of a wickerfish, pulling the hook, flopping it’s feathery green fins like it was the last thing it would ever do....
We come in through the window. Our feet leave silent footprints in the sand, which is up the frame, over the foundation, and piled against the siding of the house. Papa asks if I remember it. I shake my head, but Natalie speaks up. She says she’s seen the place in dreams since she was ten. She says she’s missed it on the inside too.
Papa touches the wall and calls me over. He says look here. He ...
I contain multitudes
Folds I lose myself in
People I become
People I don’t want to be
And people who already exist.
I think therefore I am
I overthink therefore I am too much
I am this and that
I am anger and kindness
I am winter and spring and summer and fall
And I do not want to be
I do not want to be....
