Run deep, look darkly, head down, blue.
Water runs deep; your blood, the skin surrounding — crashing, tumbling, a free fall. Her arm outstretched, singing into deep shadows; a warm overhead light shading her face with kindness and gall. She may never move like this again. She steps forward and forward again, strikes a pose — there is life everywhere, outstretched — and beckons you to follow. She turns, flies, a flash of a smile, feet carelessly beating the ground, thrumming rhythmically, pummeling eternally. You stand, go to her, bask in her motion, your limbs moving through gradients, across lines, dipping into shadow and reemerging into light. Your skin is marked from the wrought iron metal (an uncomfortable chair you left behind). She grabs your arms and makes the ridged skin smooth again. There, you dance and watch your mother spinning — spinning uncontrollably, spinning forever, in joy and jest; you watch her and Think
Think about the waves crashing, tumbling over each other and each other and how it was like horses galloping, a bird singing, light coming through a hedge; a drum, beating, like breathing. A column of water arises and collapses, thundering down on your shoulders. Mist, foam, showers of sparks and frost. Light blue, dark blue, navy and gray. Yellow, red and green. Fumbling through the froth, you go deeper, tired but looking, heading down, sinking, one breath further, Falling
Falling until sand breaks your fall, swallowing your feet, holding them there, you there, underneath the roiling storm above. Creatures known and unknown drift by (you walk through the water the way a duck cuts the surface of a pond) and sand gives way to stone — a stone path snaking further out from shore. It is quiet, with an inner light that works its way into your eyes. Teal, aquamarine, turquoise. Everything is alight with color and depth as the path snakes forward. Forward and forward until the horizon, sinking downward, depressing, the seafloor falling away, a shelf, heading downward towards its own End
Beginning again. The waves sweep sea glass along the shore. Sharp edges tempered and softened by the sea, there lies a map, unconstructed, a new form to take shape. A sculpture, glass melted, perched together, hollow wholes. You gather a few in a small bucket, and bring it to her bedside. The sheets are empty, the fabric a barren, lonely landscape. Giant hands place glass down, forming miniature textured Stonehenges, small miracles of ancient religions, monuments to bygone pasts. They gather together, take shape, forming a human body, made of glass, the giant meticulously constructing, reconstructing, the image of her Mother
Mother lies, sleeping. Her glass lungs ring out like wind chimes as her chest rises and falls. Watching her, you remember. Glass is but sand, and sand is only rock, pounded by the waves — the ocean, a center — you remember this, watching her as she unravels, the glass collapsing, her body trickling down, back towards the sea, towards home, in the Water
Water runs deep; your blood, the skin surrounding — crashing, tumbling, a free fall.