D. A. Spruzen
Floating now, he cannot tear away from her hard glassy eyes, more like blue and white marbles than anything human. He feels the tide sucking him back out and digs his fingers into the wet sand, but cannot gain purchase. Her eyes begin to undulate, striate the spectrum through a watery prism, their hues mutating as he drifts farther away. He comes up for breath when the current releases him from its clutching and snatching, but soon it regains its inexorable grip. He closes his eyes as he fights to put off taking a breath. His lungs are spent, he hears his last intake—not of air, but of tepid, salty water—and feels the relief of it, the searing pain of it. He opens his eyes once more to see those eyes fading and streaking back and up into the waves that crash over his head.
She let him go, never reached out to pull him back. She’d stopped loving him when he came back broken, started hating him when he couldn’t mend.
Freedom now, a bitter freedom.
Swept far away into old dreams, he surrenders to the warmth of it, the lightness of it.
1 comment:
Strong images and emotions. I couldn't really tell who 'she' was, but, really, I don't know that it matters.
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