Hannah and I sit on the cement bench at that seaside church
in Aranya, while hordes form outside to cheese at the camera. We prefer
to capture this seaside loneliness through words, so we sit without photos
thinking we are above those tourists, their zillion airbrushed selves in frenzied
performances for buzzes and red hearts. As we sit, my eyes lead me
to a white buoy floating atop the expanse of blue. Really, what I want is
to ask Hannah what exactly she sees in this sea, what’s poetic about
crashing waves and hair matted by the salty breeze? At eight, we picked
wild blueberries and tossed them into the O of our mouths, our hands
swiped across what we are taught is an untamed, red-hot hell,
learning to touch fire. We then tumbled down the hill like two bear cubs.
Now we curse at the sea and take hours to unknot our hair with hotel conditioner,
grains of sand scattering onto the carpet as others catch between comb-teeth.
They bend so unnaturally that they could split like the fish bones
we grind between our teeth. We no longer know magic, yet we’ve performed it,
years ago, building sand dunes and redirecting rivers until an hour after
sundown, what was rebellion was freedom. We are each Tantalus,
incessantly reaching for fruit that can never be ours, and was always ours.
Fairy tales were right to fear growing up. We decide to call that nature, too.
~~
Sophia spends her time between California, Massachusetts, and China. She loves writing poetry and short stories. She is published or forthcoming in Eunoia Review and Aster Lit, among others. When she is not writing, you can find her in the dance studio or admiring flowers growing in sidewalk cracks.
