At the Marina bar an hour after sunrise, early sunseekers with their cappuccini and cornetti swirl and eddy around the nightclub exiters, cold water, give me cold water. The two tribes mix like suntan cream and seawater.
An hour later the tattooed late-night swimmers trail up from the rocks, eyes red with salt and sleeplessness, beer bottles half full of cigarette butts and ash. The greatgrandparents distract the children with promises of coloured fish.
I dive from the rocks of my now into the sea of my memories. Those I am so desperate to hold twist silver as lightning away from my grasp. Lungs aching, fists empty, I float back to the surface, my tears mixed with the salt. Again from sharp rocks I look down and I see them, peacefully swirling and calm. Again from the rocks I dive into my memories. This time I am so sure.
First published on paragraphplanet.com 22 July 2015
The flat flagged roof overlooked only by the burnt far hill, no eyes.
The midday sun burning bright at a midsummer angle,
rainbows splitting through the shower spray.
The hissing of salt-smeared skin.
I piled my old, dried-out dreams into the bottom of the bare wooden boat. With the strength in my shoulders I heaved it out towards the horizon and, almost casually, dropped in a match. The flames flickered higher as the boat flared into the night, dreams becoming stars, each for their moment.
Wading into the sea up to my waist
I cup a handful of its water in my hand.
On my tongue it is cool and sweet
I dive in, deep, and touch the silver sand.
The old man told me: Night after night the moon kisses the sea to hide her pale loneliness. Then, from behind the thinning clouds, the stars appear. Several fall and disappear, but if you watch closely, one, always one, flies across the face of the moon. She turns her head and a night breeze rises, follows the star and he rides the night wind with the moon. For a night at least he is hers and she his. And that is what you must live for.
And then those days when the physical is all
We move in our bodies, the sun, sea and wind
Cherry blossom and birdsong are background to our heartbeats
Beyond the far horizon the mist clears.
Mother Jarvie pushed her bicycle along the street that was now part strand; she could not have pedalled through the sheets of sand the night’s storms had lifted across the road, shingle spattering and cracking the windows of the fisherfolk’s cottages. The road was ridged with grey-gold sand, as if the beach were edging away from the roiling sea.
She pushed on, her thoughts lost in the sea, in the past, in the howling of the long ago storm when her Peter had been dragged to the seabed, dragged down and bounced against the sand and slicing sharp rock and spat out peaceful, drained, to the waiting beach one Sunday morning. When they slowly lifted the weed from across his thin white face, she fainted dead.
She pushed on. The sea would not stop her, the sand it had thrown would not stop her. Her arms burned, her back ached, pain filled her head from jaw to crown but on she pushed. People watched in silence from behind loose windows, sheltered from the constant wind. The sky was black.
She pushed on, in her basket the scraps of bread she would throw to the sea so it would never again take a young one. She pushed on.
First published https://flashfriday.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/flash-friday-vol-3-7/#comment-25519
23 January 2015
Our parents are the weight in the keel of our life, slowing us down we shout, keeping you steady they say. When they are gone we can swerve, we skim faster on the tips of the waves; we can tilt our masts and fall. We hope they have left lifeboats.
Murray taught his young wife to swim so they could spend more time snorkelling and looking at the fishes. He loved it. She found diving easy, gently flippering around ten or so metres down. Later she learned to drive the boat so he knew she would be safe even if he was not there.
He shouldn’t have taught her to use the speargun, she thought, as she opened the throttle and sped towards the Albanian mountains.
simonsalento 