Sail On, Silver Girl
By: Starry Starry Write
Tags: Death, Prose, Mother, Ocean, Grief

A couple friends sent me a link to a writing contest that turned out to be a scam AND I was really struggling with a post for today. So, instead of writing talk, here’s some actual writing. Enjoy.

Stars pinprick the velvet night, along the beach. A barn owl hoots softly near by. I wish you could tell you. I know how much you loved them. I hear the waves, but I won’t go into the water. You always said night is when the sharks come in to feed. Instead, I breathe the brine and darkness and a faint taste in my mouth I never understood, but know it belongs to the ocean. The granular sand sticks to me. I run it through my fingers, and think about you. I think about being fourteen, and collecting shells along the shore. I think about being eighteen, and you insisting you must get out of the car. It didn’t matter how sick you were, by god, you had to see the sunset break across the blue. I remember being twenty-eight, and you telling me you needed to see the ocean one more time, before you died. You never did.

But that’s okay. Here in the darkness, no one has to know that. Here, I can pretend you’re with me as we watch the moon crest the horizon. As full as windfilled sails, she moves across the water like a ghost. I take clumps of rough sand and mix them with water from a discarded cup. I pile it high, until I can shape and mold it under my fingers. We were supposed to make a sandcastle, next time we came.

We were supposed to do a lot of things. But I won’t think about that now. Right now, I think about the shape. I’m not a sculptor who builds with my hands, but I remember the roundness of your face. Your bright smile. I remember your eyes, a color I’ve never seen before. Before the sunset, I picked through the rainbow hued sea-glass, until I found them. A pale greenish blue, like tears from the ocean. I place them tenderly on the misshapen sandy head, and make a mouth of tiny shells. It’s finished.

Beside my creation, I breathe. I swear… I can almost smell you. Not the smell after the sickness, tainted with creams and pills and injections and gauze. And not the smell of the hospital, so clean and sterile. No, this is the smell of you before. Light coconut and sweet pear perfume. If I can smell you, then it worked. For just a second, words tremble in my throat, before they tumble out, as water tumbles from the river into the sea.

“See, Mama?” I wipe the salted grief from leaking eyes. “I promised I’d take you to the beach. And you taught me to never break a promise. See?” I plead. “I did good. Didn’t I? Please tell me I did good.”

I open my eyes. The tiny tower of sand and shells is gone. Instead, I see you. You smile at me, like you always used to.

“I knew my baby boy wouldn’t let me down.” You laugh like a gull on the wing and push my hair out of my eyes.

“I’m proud of you, baby. And I always have been.”

For six months, it’s all I wanted to hear. All I dreamed of. I open my mouth to speak, but you shush me with your finger.

“I love you,” you say. “ But it’s time to go now. The tide is coming.”

“No!” The words escape me in an inhuman cry. It’s deranged and pleading and scrapes across the quiet night like waves lashing against a storm. ”Just five more minutes?”

You shake your head. “If it didn’t work at bed time, it won’t work now.” You whisper, and kiss my wet cheek.

I want to beg, but it’s too late. My little sand sculpture greets my eyes. It’s not you. Maybe it never was. But it doesn’t matter now. Time is against me. Salt and sea foam, like snow under the moon, laps at my ankles. You begin to crumble. I try and hold you, but my hands are sieves and you flow out, and away. Just like last time.

“Sail on, silver girl,” I whisper to no one. “Sail on.”

I sit for a moment in the wet grit. The wind whips against me, and I am alone.

After a time, I take the sandy trail back away from the water and the moon and the air so filled with salt it takes my breath.

A barn owl hoots in the distance.

__________________________________________

-Your Loving Vincent