Our Lady of Perpetual Motion

I bow to you. How your hands take mine and pull me under your heavy embrace. How watery your bosom against my breast, your fingertips against my chest, your smile pressed into the gaze of my distracted eyes.

I bow to you.

For your blood is a bubbling brook of fresh water, your breath like a sea breeze that carries the brine, your heartbeat now the undertow that lulls me to sleep and tears me from bed, scrambling as though I’m drowning, drowning as you take me in and feed me.

I bow to you.

With your body entangled in mine, you are a whirlpool, and I am your spin. You are the current, and I am the sailor stranded in your open waters. You are the waves, and I am the thunder you bring to the shore. I am helpless, I am hopeless, I am hindered, and you carry me in your moist arms, your damp palms against my sagging spine.

A Storm’s Coming

Wanda pulled herself under the water and felt the blue waves poking down from the surface. In another second she broke the surface, gasping in the salty sea air, and grabbed hold of the massive stone that jutted up through the waves. She exhaled forcefully and pulled herself out of the water, but even once she had settled herself atop the rock, the sea foam still washed up to her waist.

She wrung the water from her darkened hair and sat back, braced up on her hands, while the rising sun shown down upon her. By the time Wanda’s hair had dried and blew through the wind in amber waves just as bright as the glare upon the water, she saw her friend Isaac walking up the beach toward her. He wasn’t tall for his age, and not stocky either, but something about his simple smile always filled her with warmth from head to tail.

Ocean Tales

Sirensong

You stand at the shoreline, watching as the water rides the sand in and out. The sky is bright and blue overhead and all around you, people bustle up and down the beach, throwing beach balls or laughing in groups or lounging around under broad umbrellas. You try to ignore all of them and soon the only thing you can hear is the crash of the waves, each the song of a siren calling you toward the deep.

BEFORE THE STORM

FADE IN:

EXT. ROCKY BEACH – DAY.

ISAAC, a red-haired sixteen-year-old with freckles and a strong builds, sits in the sand just past the water’ edge while WANDA, Isaac’s age with amber hair, drifts in the foamy water, holding tightly to a black rock rising from the sea.

ISAAC

Day’s lovely, ain’t it?

WANDA

Always, Isaac, when you say it is.

Sunday Sails Away

For NF, or C, or S. ILY.

Isaac was a fisherman’s son, red hair and freckles and a strong build all the town’s girls swooned over, but more so he was a simple boy, thought simple things, and enjoyed simple days at the shoreline three or so miles from port. Here the rocks were roughest and the waves crashed in with white peaks and foam eddies around the tallest dark spires.

“Day’s lovely, ain’t it?” he asked Wanda one morning, dawn cresting over the distant sea, the sky painted in pink and vermilion.

“Always, Isaac, when you say it is,” she answered. Wanda had been and would always be his closest friend, he’d decided some time ago as he adored her for her bravery, always precariously perched upon the black rocks, lower half perpetually covered in sea foam as the waves crashed and her amber hair blew around her pale face in the sea breeze.

“I could say the sky’s dark on a Sunday and you’d still agree,” Isaac said with a smile as Wanda turned momentarily westward to meet his eyes from where he sat on a small outcropping of sand where the waves barely made it.

“Perhaps,” she said, smiling equally. The wind caught a tuft of her hair and draped it over her eyes; a delicate hand brushed it aside and Isaac merely watched peacefully.

“A storm’s coming,” she crowed over the thunderous water and they both silently acknowledged the darkening horizon. In his mind he imagined small sparks of lightning flitting beneath the distant clouds, dark squalls of seagulls chased away and the fish restless for days to come, his father grumbling at the broken fish lines and his mother cleaning with everlasting fury until his passion subsided.

“Think it’ll be as bad as last time?” he asked.

“Certainly,” she said softly, “if not seven times worse.”