I will not ask you where you came from
I will not ask, and neither should you
Michael comes back to the beach like a wave with a heart in its mouth, over and over again coughing up words he couldn’t say and things he could not put into words in the first place. Michael feeds things to the sea, first paper, then pen, sacrifice after sacrifice in the place of his body though it calls him toward the depths like a siren might. Its song is not kind and it is not beautiful but he is taken by it nonetheless. He could never say no to the waves except today when he does. Its chaos echoes loudly within him. His ribs are the boulders against which the waves crash.
There is snow even here. It lines the browning salt grass and tumbles in sheets down the dunes to its edge where high tide marked it unnecessary only hours before. Michael is ankle deep in wet sand and saltwater and the chill of it makes him dizzy.
He thinks, today of all days, he is useless.
In the end it was not Michael that was called to war, not Michael that was sent away to gather information, not Michael whose name was called to stand among his people (his people, he thinks with some softer version of bitterness, blurred at the edges and faded to gray) and pledge his heart and soul to danger, to country, to Isra.
To Isra. It rings loud, a church bell sounding in the tabernacle. It bounces back and forth in the empty room where Michael would put his heart if he knew where to find it - alas, like the sand it has been pulled out with the tide so many times that it has become displaced and unrecognizable. (An alarm, changing wildly in every cell of his body. His DNA is screaming under his gaze and it is saying what are we going to do, which is why, in the end, and as he always must, Michael returns to the sea.)
He hadn’t known that he would find her here and may not have come if he had. He is too alive right now, singing with every centimeter of his body. Michael’s fetlocks have long gone numb but still, he stands, searching the white crests of the waves for—he doesn’t know. He is struck again by just how often he doesn’t know.
There is snow even here. It lines the browning salt grass and tumbles in sheets down the dunes to its edge where high tide marked it unnecessary only hours before. Michael is ankle deep in wet sand and saltwater and the chill of it makes him dizzy.
He thinks, today of all days, he is useless.
In the end it was not Michael that was called to war, not Michael that was sent away to gather information, not Michael whose name was called to stand among his people (his people, he thinks with some softer version of bitterness, blurred at the edges and faded to gray) and pledge his heart and soul to danger, to country, to Isra.
To Isra. It rings loud, a church bell sounding in the tabernacle. It bounces back and forth in the empty room where Michael would put his heart if he knew where to find it - alas, like the sand it has been pulled out with the tide so many times that it has become displaced and unrecognizable. (An alarm, changing wildly in every cell of his body. His DNA is screaming under his gaze and it is saying what are we going to do, which is why, in the end, and as he always must, Michael returns to the sea.)
He hadn’t known that he would find her here and may not have come if he had. He is too alive right now, singing with every centimeter of his body. Michael’s fetlocks have long gone numb but still, he stands, searching the white crests of the waves for—he doesn’t know. He is struck again by just how often he doesn’t know.
@isra here is a starter that kind of got away from me?
