Storm

I blink and in that instant, God is gone. I've never known Him. My sins are cold and wet as seaweed around me. Gulls squeal in the half light of a morning which will never dawn. I am suspended from the prow of a sunken ship and the dead weight of its waterlogged timbers tugs at my toes. I know I am not moving anywhere, even when the tide is out and I am pushed up through the glassy ceiling of the ocean, in sight of the shore.

A gown of rotted wood swirls from my hips and merges with the hull. Though I may have been carved with hopeful eyes, with prideful shoulders, with an eager breath swelled in my bosom, with one arm cocked in salute to allow a shade for my optimistic face... I am stagnant. Barnacles sprout from the folds of my dress, cumbersome sequins washed white by the waves.

There is no escape from my place at the bow, and my yearning for something, for anything else takes hold, wearing away at my steady, oaken resolve. When I am under water, I long for the sights and sounds of that unreachable lagoon. When the tide recedes, I am given over to gravity, and my position as Tantalus stokes the flames of my frustration... making me long for the buoyancy of my under water prison.

My eyes open, and life goes on.