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.
Katrelle turned her hands into the frothy waters. “Are we sure we must share this?” She gestures to the island around us. I knew what she meant. The unwavering blueness of the sky above. The swaying trees and speckled plants. The pecking of birds and calls of wild rodents. The smells of the sand and salt.
“Soon.” I shook my head, watching as the land bridge was swallowed up by the rising waters. “But not yet.”
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 of lines she’d missed. A man with three children swung open the shop doors, talking loudly on the phone, and Mandy’s grip on the pencil tightened. She huffed, reread the line for the fourth or fifth or—oh, she couldn’t remember any more. Learning nothing new, she shoved the book in her backpack and dipped out of the shop, wishing one of the passing busses would run her over before her final. Or better yet, a plane would crash into that no-good coffee shop, leaving her to study in the quiet ashes of chaos.
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. Ba chuckled at this thought; if he had any say, it was the last thing the wickerfish would do.
Perhaps it had stuck on the very edges of a clam or a underwater rock, and now as Ba attempted to wrench it free, it dragged the immovable object across sand and silt, ruining his newly crafted line and pole.
Ba sighed and sat back in his rotator boat. The waves crashed in little spurts against its bamboo walls, and far away, reeds and watergrass led out to a great sea. Ba gave one more yank to his line, and then leaned over the edge of the boat.
In the dark, two orbs of light snapped open, fixating on Ba with a light like sunlight, but different. Much different.
Far, far below, something was getting ready to ruin Ba’s peaceful morning.
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 says touch here.
I do, even though I can’t feel what he feels. Natalie turns around a dinner table. She climbs the small dunes on the floor and sits on the oak wood, running her fingers over the cracks and bumps like Papa did. Like she can feel the life once here.
Papa tells Natalie something—something Natalie used to say when Papa made dinner in this very kitchen. In this very kitchen, he says again and again.
Once more, and I leave. I am faster than the wind sweeping across our farm those long months, and I am angrier than the sand and grit that stuck in my family’s eyes when the great gusts were acting up.
In the sun, I turn into the sand digging, digging, digging. I am not sure why. Perhaps it is to find something lost. Perhaps it is to see if I can find my own foundation buried beneath the sand.
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.
