farther from the shore; chime

CISTELLA ARVA

The morning comes sweet, as light comes pouring in slowly until daybreak swallows the remaining shadows. I take it to wake before the sun, and while I love the moon — she tugs at the sea, then me — I've known my own kind well enough to know that trust should not be placed in between their lips and in the lightning glint of razor-sharp teeth. My own mother has cradled me among her silver threads, sunk herself deep inside my growing bones and kissed my ankles so I'd grow to ache, to wither whenever I'd stray.

She calls to me inside my heart. My body lays still, worn and beaten, like a shipwrecked vessel stranded in the middle shore. Upturned white sheets become my waters, the crests lost together with my flesh and my limbs as fingertips ghost over the ridges bones create and press deeper where vacant space has made vacant beds; press a palm under the clavicle's shade
and hear every beat my chest gives as the collective waves pounding against rocks. She calls to me, and I follow.

I've grown careless about formality, let alone the greetings reserved for mornings. They're in the kitchen, I can tell, by the sound of something sizzling and soft chattering, and likewise they're used to the sound of my footsteps padding along the wooden floor, used to hearing it come from the hallway and disappear after the click of the door closing. They've given up on trying to rein me for a while, exasperated with previous attempts at a nice, normal family breakfast. I can't be bothered, and pretending is suffocating.

The ocean breeze that welcomes me isn't so welcoming and warm as I believe a homecoming should be. It bites at your skin (hide your wounds, hide your wounds; there's salt in the air) and whips strands of hair at your face so they stick to your cheek, but I'm used to this. I'm used to the pebbles that threaten to dig into my soles, as though a reminder that I've got to wear shoes at some point. I'm used to feeling the sand sink under my own weight as I walk, and then to pick off the seaweed that has stuck to my feet. And then the large rock that's set apart from the rest, freestanding and marked with my own invisible handprints. And the quick stab of pain from stepping on the wrong places, landing on sharp edges than a foothold (but I prevail.)

And then the open sea.