Conversations with the Sea
By Kenneth D. Woods

I spun you out of sea foam; songs and prayers and water rising. I spun you out of sea foam. A boy just for me.

The light falls softly, blue and green; dappled shafts of gold kiss the boundaries.

Warm.

Shushing.

Sighing.

Breathing.

It is my home...but you knew that when you called me.

I was never pretty or interesting. I had mousy brown hair that fell around my shoulders in a frazzled jumble. My nose was always too big with a callus on it from my spectacles. No tits to speak of. But that didn't matter to you. You thought I hung the moon.

I suddenly had a body, though I didn't yet even know what a body was. It took me many months to learn to speak. I only knew this place hurt. This place would always hurt.

But when I saw you standing there, toes clenching in the sand, the strangeness, the wonder of you, I knew I had to stay, at least for a little while. And suddenly the years stretched. Oh, how I adored you.

We made love for the first time there on the beach, the waves spreading my hair out in a nimbus around my head. You couldn't even speak then. Do you remember?

But I had made you, so you knew what to do. I gave you rough hands, because that's what I always thought a man's hands should feel like. I gave you soft grey eyes to stare into mine. Because eyes shouldn't be hard.

And I gave you lust. A burning in your thighs to match my own.

Be careful what you wish for is the old caution. I didn't know it would hurt so much. I didn't know you wouldn't stop.

I'm sorry for the first time. I didn't know. I thought it was what you wanted. Some need inside me drove me over a precipice. Plunged me into fire.

I never could make you understand that I existed before you. But you changed me. I will admit that. What does the sea know of fire?

My job called me to another place. A place that hadn't seen an ocean in millions of years. That's about the time you decided you would learn to cook. I will never forget the look on your face when the pasta sauce exploded all over the kitchen because you had the heat up too high, and didn't know to stir it.

I will also never forget the way you began staring out the window, off to the west. You would see me looking at you. Seeing me see the sadness. You would smile and make a joke. God, you told the most awful jokes!

I tried to hide the longing from you. You tried to hide it from yourself. I could hear the sea calling, even here, in this place of red earth and small twisted trees. Sometimes I would try to cheer you up; sometimes it was you trying to help me. Your charms did help, for a little while. God they made the house stink.

Our first fight was the worst. They were all pretty bad though. You're killing me you stupid bitch, you'd say. I knew I was, but I couldn't help it. I needed you.

We always made up though, mostly because we were tired I think. It was one of our rules. Never go to bed angry. Funny how we always kept that rule.

We kept that rule because we loved each other. And I never meant what I said. Why did it have to hurt so much? I'm sure it wasn't so for everyone. Or maybe it was. Bob and Katie never fought that I could tell. But who knows what they did behind closed doors.

Wow. Bob and Katie. I haven't thought of them in years.

We moved back to Malibu on your fifth birthday. Our fifth anniversary. You got better. We were happy again. You spent your days in the ocean and your nights with me.

You were so good with the kids on the beach. Remember Johnny Masters? The twiggy boy with buck-teeth and the most gorgeous locks of curly blonde hair? You know, the one who was afraid of the water.

He's a marine biologist now, and his teeth are fixed.

I saw him the other day. He asked how you were doing.

I'm sorry there was so much pain, darling. But it wasn't just you. I hurt too. Do you know what it was like always being afraid to lose you?

I just thought of something. Remember the time we went to New Orleans? To Pat O'Briens? Whew! I'd never been so drunk in all my life. Still, I remember the look of delight on your face when darkness fell on the patio and they lit the flame fountain. You were mesmerized by it. The way the water fell and the fire danced all the same.

I was always on fire. Most of the time it didn't hurt too badly. That's why I was so surprised by the cold. Lying in bed, sweating from the fire eating away at me, shivering all the while. You held on to me so hard. I held on just as fiercely. I was dying for you. I'm still dying for you.

In the end I let you go. When my charms no longer worked, when it was clear that you would die, I helped you walk to the sea one last time. You could barely speak then.

There was so much I wanted to tell you.

So I sang loose the cords that bound you. It wasn't like I expected it to be. I guess I thought you would change slowly, but you just collapsed back into water. A splash and you were gone.

Never gone.

You were right. I was a selfish bitch. Can you ever forgive me for holding on so long, so tightly? I never was very good with the obvious stuff. Have you ever tried to hold on to water? It just slips right through your fingers.

It's odd isn't it? When you're in love your body barely seems big enough to contain all that feeling. You feel like you might burst from it any second. But when you lose it, you wonder how that same body can hold emptiness so big. I'm so empty, baby.

I'm old now, too. But in some ways, I'm still just a girl, trying to find a boy to love her.

Love.

The End

Story copyright Kenneth D. Woods, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com