There was a moment when birds exploded from my chest and every gasping soul swept in to pull away the remnants of what you left. Every breath and piece of tongue and bit of beating heart until all that remained were clumps of hair and feathers and mewling voice. Not even shadow, but perhaps a silhouette.

Empty is our house as blind you stumble forward into the rising sun, seeing only red hot pain, although I wish that you could see my cold white hands and how they lust to reach inside your chest and grasp at tangles, working deftly, quickly, just working.

Of flesh, of thirst. Sightless eyes and brief, unpromising touch. Of heat and pressing bodies. Legs and arms, as the crook of your neck is salty from the sand of a sea you visit only in your fevered dreams. Eyelids blinking tears and sweat, and thirsting. Thirsting.

I want to scoop what darkness runs through your veins like silver running through that cliff, to rub each flaking piece into the heart of that little porcelain bowl.

To take and hold you, to lick and swell from what I take knowing I'll be done but you will not. But I'll return to see, to weep, and watch and to be watched by other silhouettes who've run their course and jealous, turn to us.

Knowing that you'll long to know of what became of me. Knowing only how I loved you as dying embers love a breath of air. Knowing not of how now, I can grow beside you, both strong and reaching toward that sun and what we see of other worlds.

 

You were not beside me when I crouched

amidst the seed and reeds and

broken bits of shell and

skull that cracked beneath my feet.

Crabs and pipers turned to dust to blend with

sand, the drool and piss of angry dog

like sea foam- how many gallons of water in that sea but

my mouth was so dry my heart,

mi corazón,

no puedo.

No podría.

 

Photo © 2008 Audrey Kawasaki visit her site @  http://www.audrey-kawasaki.com/ 

I remember that day you came for me as if I dream it every night. Ten years ago, and I was only eight. Ten years ago and my father was a fool, my mother was dead to your arms and I was thinking I would be the same. We in the village saw you often, of course- you rested on our shore and raged against our rocks. You took our fathers, our sons, our mothers. Don't be sorry. I have since forgiven you.

I remember- my father in disgrace- he'd gone to the sea once more for her, for her revenge. Once more searching for the Loreley. The last time. He promised it would be the last, but we all knew he'd drive himself to ground and never stop for such the searing pain he harbored in his chest. He knew he'd killed my mother.

She had found them together.

After that she felt nothing else, I'm sure of it for I was always closer to my mother than the others. I knew the blinding white that blistered in her eyes. The hollow space of blackened air that hung suspended in her chest. She used the strength she drew from that to pull herself atop the cliff, her last graceful movement ending as soon as it began. My wee brother Cillian knew not what was happening, thinking she’d only gone atop to dive, to hit the sea and then return. In that moment of silence- when everyone had stopped to watch, to realize- his laugh broke into all of us and froze our blood as it moved.

My father broke with her, against those rocks. You told me later you had felt the shock of their impact. It almost broke you.

Almost.

Bless him mother. He knew not what he did, for she were a witch o’ the sea. He’d fallen under her curse and couldn’t think of anything but what she offered. And oh, how he mourned. He forgot everything. He forgot us. He almost forgot me until you came to him. I almost never came to you. I thank the gods for my poor bumbling fool of a father.

My father thought he had the strength to die, to be reunited with my mother. He was mistaken. In grips with you his ship moaned and creaked, wood bending and sails cracking. He thought that no one would be able to hear him as he muttered, as he bargained against his life with mine. I think he thought of me for how much I was like my mother. Feeling gracious, you had given him a moment to make penance and he infuriated you with his cowardice. You faced him, this salt wearied man, on his knees with fists gripped and eyes screwed shut, you faced him and granted his desire. Far worse punishment, you thought.

Far better to us.

He found his way home after the winds died. My brother and sister ran to greet him on the shore, but I held back. Something in me lit the moment he had licked his salt-dried lips to speak, and I had known the truth long before he made his way to shore. Before he made his way to me, and fell, weeping to my feet. I placed my hand upon his head only for my siblings. Were it just me I would have gone to you then, and never turned back. Were it just me I would have gone to you the moment my mother’s broken body washed to shore.

We sat up that night, the dark falling all around us. My father sat across from me lit by candle light, his eyes weeping blood and salt water. With his first footstep over the hold of our house, he found he could not stop. Poor Cillian was so scared of him he would not speak from then on, though you told me that the blood did stop once I had gone. Once everyone had seen him in disgrace.

We waited till well past the sun set. Hush in the house, and hush on the shore we heard nothing- but I felt you coming. I felt you slip under the door and rise to my ankles. So cold I went numb before I had time to think. My older sister, Sinead, made as if to stand but found her feet entwined in kelp. It was all I could do to rise and walk towards the sea. Towards you. As I walked the water swirled around my ankles, pulling and pushing. It pushed me towards the boat you left upon the shore. I did not look back, I did not need to.

Ten years ago and I was only eight. Ten years ago, my father a fool, my mother dead to your arms- myself rocked to sleep by you every night, and every night you whispered in my ear, setting all my senses to fire.

I’ve spent ten years in this boat, with naught but the cry of gulls and the waves lapping the hull. Ten years and I’ve learned to catch rain water as it falls. You brought me conch and abalone to use as basins, you brought me kelp and cress, clam and shrimp. Once you bore me an apple so bruised, and with a crust of salt thicker than that of any cured meat, but the inside was still sweet and I savored its sugars on my lips for days.

My clothes have long disintegrated, my skin has burned and healed, and long ago my thoughts were closed to land I knew you would not steer me towards. The night sky is so much brighter here, and though I am alone, I do not long for human company. I have you. Finally, we have each other. I am your Aisling, your dream. And you are my Aigéan.

My sea. My beast.

You are my heart.

Ten years until this point. Afloat still, not realizing that today marks our release. After ten years you whisper, slán leat. Midnight and you find shore. I sleep, but troubled by your farewell even in my rest, I cry out. Ten years, I did not realize even my fool father would not bargain with the entirety of my life.

Morning and I cannot bear it. I will not leave the boat. I tell myself, not to the shore, but you make the boat remember its age, and though I stand amongst the tired broken wood, your waves push me back. Away, and I fall into the surf, sand and tears and skin and all of me refusing what you want.

I will not have it, instead I rise to face you, for I will not lie broken in defeat like my mother, nor will I allow you to deceive me, like you did my father.

You have always been the air and earth and sky, but most of all you've been the sea. A beast, but still something more. You're the sand and the kelp, the urchins and the rays. Your voice is a storm breaking on the horizon but your eyes are the stars that lull me to sleep.

You push me away as I cling to you- but the break in the rhythm of your breath deceives you. Our souls are more than entwined, they're amalgamated- and standing here, barefoot on lava rocks and the bits of broken shell that all belong to you, I know that you're breathing me in. Every little bit you're breathing and longing and aching.

As am I.

I seep back into you, and the shock of me is too strong for you to fight against. You have no choice for I have given myself to you. For ten years, never to see your face, and ten years wishing to embrace you. I must be mad, but I know I heard your voice. I felt you in my dreams. I’ve left my broken family, my broken life, and now I wish to leave my broken useless body here amidst the rocks.

Release me beast.

Release me.

Go scaoilimid mise.

You cannot ignore my plea, for it is my heart and my dream that you love.

And so, you rise up. Everywhere around me, in me, through me, you raise me up, too, and bring me crashing down until my breath is done.

 

Audrey Kawasaki © 2009 Visit her @ http://www.audrey-kawasaki.com/ .

Down to the cellar and he found her, curled up among the cans of oil and bags of flour, the dirt floor damp beneath her, not from tears or blood or piss, instead with salt and sea, though it lay nowhere near where they lived together. He knelt to meet her slowly for she was little more than feral and terrified of him. He could see it in the way she dug her fingers into the dirt becoming mud becoming sea.

In the kitchen the floor was still covered with broken egg and feathers. On the counter there was almost dough. In the stove an almost fire. Embers burned but didn't ignite, and somewhere underneath the floorboards, rolled and wrapped in twine, lay her almost escape. He'd have to move it tomorrow. He'd clean the mess tomorrow but then, just then, he knelt, and talked in whispers, sweet love notes. Words she did not understand, a song she'd heard so many times she heard it even when she screamed for hours, eyes screwed shut and throat raw and bleeding even, but still that song. She began to growl.

He left and came back with a blanket. A bowl of stew. He left again.

By then the crow was stiff. The eyes were dull. He wondered if he should take the heart, the liver, the bones, but decided against it until he moved the skin. By then, the things he might have wanted would have spoiled, so he left it at the back door for the wolves. He cleaned the egg and feathers, saving only four for her. A necklace, maybe. A fine thing. He checked the lock and satisfied, he brought the fire back to life.

It had only been two weeks. Only two, he told himself. Not so long. And it would go this way for a while. That was why he had to move the skin, and soon. She was just as the bird, the wolves. Worse for all her night dark hair and eyes. Human coming, but still not there.

She picked the carrots from the stew with muddied hands. In the dark she tried again to talk to them. She sent out motions and colors, tastes and sounds, but nothing came back. She was too far away, and what little of the ocean she could call to her was not enough. Not enough to disappear, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. She stretched her legs and toes and fingers and tried not to hate them. When she thought of the him up there, it was a tangle of things she'd known, but never really what he was. He was hunter, and teeth, seaweed catching and storming waters to confuse her.

Upstairs the flying fish had come to her, had hopped across the hardened not sand, scratching at it with tiny claws a fish was not supposed to have. Her eyes were starving for it. She watched it stop a lay away, and turn its head to stare, fins too big, and soft. In water it would fail. And she would eat it. But here, she wasn't certain. Here she was almost afraid, but for the grace of its neck and silent shuff of scales. It watched her while the hunter bent to make the hot that hurt, and while he couldn’t see, it hop-fluttered across and to a place where light did not quite reach. Its beak was quick and suddenly in among the cracks, pulling and prying and she was curious too.

And then he was upon them. He was twisting the neck in his hands as the eggs hit the floor, and then, suddenly, she was being pushed down the narrow steps into the cool and dark almost sea and though falling, she was still glad to be out of all the light and hot and anger.

                   

©2008 @http://qarrtsiluni.com/2008/09/14/against-atmosphere/

                                      

              All of a sudden I'm too conscious of my blinking.  I don't know what brought it on, except that I think it was because I was watching television and someone blinked too much and then I thought about my blinking and now that's all I think about. Am I blinking too much? Not enough? Do I really need to blink? How long can I go without blinking? And then I get a headache that feels like a chasm in the middle of my skull- a split the world open hurt that makes blinking the last thing on my mind and then it doesn't matter anymore. All I want to do is sleep.

                I lay down on the floor and I think, I never realized how soft it is, like, why doesn't everybody sleep on the floor all the time, why do people even waste their money on beds, all the hours they work for money they have to save and save and then they go and spend it on some mattress that won't spill a glass of wine when all the time they could just be sleeping on this floor that is so damn comfortable I feel like I will never want to move again. And I just rest my cheek on the cool of the hardwood floor and I just breathe and breathe and breathe and I wait for dark to come.  

                After I've been lying there for too long and not long enough, the noise of the t.v. in the background for some commercial- is your hair soft enough? But I don't have any worries about my hair because it is in the atmosphere and the air and the space all around me floating like I am underwater. It is a marvelous feeling and I know that if I use that special shampoo they want me to buy then it will just weigh my beautiful hair down.

                And then I am floating along with my hair my whole body free of gravity my head no longer hurting and I'm looking up and my ceiling isn't there anymore so I can see stars and constellations whose names I don't remember. I'm just reaching out to touch them when I hear the front door of my house close and I look down to see who it is and it's someone nameless who looks very familiar carrying a bag of groceries they probably want to share with me, and that makes me smile. And then I look closer and I realize that I see me too on the floor, almost I look like a crimson smudge, not from blood, I'm sure because I think I remember my bathrobe is that color.

                I try to remember why I was home in my bathrobe alone anyway and I can't, only I see the person with the groceries has spilled them all over the floor, and they have all the right things for making a chicken soup and I think maybe I was sick? And I want to go investigate except that I suddenly notice that while I was trying to remember things the atmosphere was still slowly sucking me up like pudding through a straw. And I am pudding. And I don't want to be pudding, I want to be back in my home with my crimson robe and my nameless familiar person and my almost chicken soup. I want to go back-

                I WANT TO GO BACK!

                And that's when I start fighting the atmosphere and  moving against it like I am a combination of a swimmer and a runner and a really pissed off cat. But that steady suck of atmosphere is relentless and I am going up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up- and everything below is lots of dots and I look around and realize I am a part of a constellation although I still can't remember the name of it.

                When I finally feel like the sucking is done and the realization that I'm not going back has finally sunk in, I try to stay angry and I try to be a mix of all the right emotions, like sorrowful and regretful and concerned about what will happen to that nameless familiar person- but I can't.

                I'm up here, a part of this constellation looking around at everything, and I notice I am very shiny. Not like wake up in the morning and still haven't washed your face yet shiny, but shiny like the sun catches the surface of the ocean shiny and I feel like a deep gold, like, the deepest gold there is. And it is a good feeling.

                And then I laugh, because I realize that all that worrying I did about blinking didn't matter, because I don't even need to blink anymore, and it wasn't even that important, but what I'm doing now is even more important then anything ever.