CW 6: Into the Sea

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.


Into the Sea

for Paul Massie. Thank you for the times you carried me.

The man who walks the cliff’s edge is dreaming wide awake. Below him, the sea spreads to the edge of the world, from which it brings no news; only salty secret whispers to the sand, whroom, whroom, a full-body lick to the rocks, ohhhhhh. Sometimes when the man is on the beach, the sea leaves debris at his feet like a hunting cat lays down the rabbit’s carcass in a cave where hungry kittens tumble and play. Sometimes when the man is in the water, he and the sea are kittens together. Sometimes they play rough.

The man who walks the cliff’s edge is dreaming his life back so that he may live it again. He looks like an old fierce bird, and his old fierce eyes are sea-blue. His life has been like the sea: deep and rough and restless, full of storms and calms. There are monsters in his deeps. Some people, he has drowned. Others, he has carried on astonishing journeys to places farther than they ever thought to go, and left them blinking in the brightness or shadow of themselves.

And now he brings them all back, like opening a treasure chest and pulling up gold one piece at a time. Here is a boy he helped to sing an impossible song. Here is a girl who loved him so much she could not speak around him, except in other people’s words. Here is a woman he treated like the sea treats the rocks, the lick and the leaving behind. Here are all the conversations, all the laughter, all the tears, all the cigarettes and coffee, all the work, all the times we told him I can’t and he said Yes, you can, you can, and the wide-eyed white-hot joy in those blue eyes when we did.

The man on the cliff has dreamed his life back so that he can let it go. Yes, you can, we tell him. And so he leaps, with the same joy.

Whroom, whroom, the sea says. Ohhhhhh.

2 thoughts on “CW 6: Into the Sea”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.