Shoreline

       I can see it passing behind me in great fronds of light, drifting back along those grey shores of yester-years.  I cannot tell what it is, only that I am cold now.  I feel like I have been stretched.  A great breeze rolls in from the sea, tasting of salt and something like rust.  Looking out upon the grey-glass waters I spy the distant shapes of oil rigs, wading in the mist.  Drawn to them, I walk on, finding that my feet do not break the water.  It’s like walking on flagstone after heavy rain.  There’s a smell of distant summers I cannot properly place; I see a sea bird flicker overhead.  It is a strange bird—grey and slight and shifting in and out of the light.  No sound does it make, and, watching it, I have the keen sense I have seen a ghost, a memory, a reflection—something of the kind, but I am unsure if there is a difference.  On either side of me, the waves lap slow-like, mirror-like, glittering quick-silver in the golden-rayed sun I cannot see.  There are too many clouds.  There is too much mist, and I cannot tell which way I am going.  Only…towards those distant rigs.  North, South, East, West—I cannot say.

            Peering over my shoulder, I can see the stretched shadow of myself across the shoreline, even though I am wandering now.  Wandering far away.

            It dawns on me, then, rolling through my mind like a slow, cold creek.  I am whole no longer; I have left myself behind.  Finding I cannot stop, I walk on, looking back over my shoulder.  What I was—all I ever was—lays empty on the beach.  I move, yet it stays.  From beyond the celestial shoreline, I can see people gather.  They shout—they cry—but I cannot hear their voices.  Not fully, at least.  Gathering, they take that thing that once was me and burry it and mourn it and remember it and ask gently if I can hear them, but I cannot—not fully, anyway—and I walk on down those endless flagstones to a place I am sure they cannot reach me, and I am unsure how long they will recall my name.  For a moment, I try to know fear.  But it is passing away.  The sea below is cool.  Things I do not have words for swim through it.  Silver things, golden things.  

            A chorus like the ringing of great bells fills the air.  The fogs shake.  Overhead, more of the flightless birds.  I wonder at their flighty shapes.  They bear the faces of people I half-remember.  Before me the rigs rise great and ghostly from the sea, flickering mists at their feet, cables groaning in the final breeze.  Their pillars are a cold basalt and their many latticed cross-walks the color of bone.  Gaunt things sit about the parapets, blue eyes fixed on me in quiet judgment.  Something massive cries in the shadowed under-bellies of the great rigs, but it is not a sad sound.  It is a post-birth cry—a starting gasp of air at the light of a yet-unseen mother star.  In total, there are more rigs than I can count.  They line the sea in even columns stretched on and on forever.  Past the line, the sea drops into a nether white.  At last, the fear rolls into me, crashing like a breaker.  Air fills lungs I did not know I had anymore.  My breathing is labored.  I try to run, but can only move forward.  Moments flash.  Tire swings and summer nights and parks in autumn and birthday cakes and arguments and butterfly kisses and butterflies in my belly and skinned knees and deep pools and swirling dresses and apple juice and half-remembered TV programs.  Flowing—I can feel the moments flowing from my wrists like blood, and I am afraid.  The nether white looms ahead and I am growing close; I hear the voices call from the distant rear.  It is my name…my name again and again…whispered again and again.  I do not want to go, and the blue-eyed creatures watch sadly from the rigging, but they do not speak.  Clouds roll ahead of me, and I see shapes glimmering among them.  Strange shapes I do not have words for—shapes that look like midnight creatures tucked beneath my bed or half-remembered nightmares.  Utterances reverberate by my feet—words from under the skin of the water.  I fear, now, that the water will part and I will fall in, fall down to some dark place I do not wish to go.  Anglers light up under the sea—anglers and eels and great whales that do not bear mortal names.  Sea birds flutter in and out of the white, but their silence does nothing but chill me.  I do not want silence; I want the creak of rope swings and the sound of clinking dishes and the kind calling of my name.

            The kind calling of my name.

            I hear it, and my breath stops.  From beyond the white, calling like a voice through the womb, I hear my name.  Something like my name.  Only, I cannot remember what my name meant, only its sound.  The sound is sweet, feminine, familiar.  Beside me, the rigs part into the mist and I am alone.  I look behind, watching the shoreline fade into the fog.  On all sides, I am surrounded by brilliant, grey-white clouds that roll above the silver, undisturbed water.  Somewhere far above, the sun shines.  It is not unpleasant—not hot or too bright.  Looking down, I cannot see feet, but I feel the water rush between my toes. I stand, glittering system of thoughts amidst the water. The surf laps at me, but will not surrender me to the depths. Night comes, but it is not the night I have known. It is the night of space. A night without the dome of the sky. Stars bloom overhead and I see the canals of the cosmos weave on into infinity. Galaxies swirl out into the ever-black between them, and I know the great extension of the universe. It fills me with great wonder, but I feel I have always known it.

            I hear my name again.

            And again.

            Birds flutter overhead.  For another lifetime, I stand there and watch them.  As they dart to and fro, voices enter their mouths.  They caw far above, speaking in that avian tongue I do not understand.  At last, I step forward.  I hear my name again.

            And again.