Toward the Sea

There is a room with three walls and no doors. A ceiling but no floor. There is sand and there is ocean water and there are people. Throngs of people. The waves wash in and out from the open end of the room, through the throngs, against the back wall. All is sepia-washed walls and light and people and I am there looking out into the ocean.

Along the left wall is a couch. Red, leather, extending the length of the room to ocean-edge of the wall. It is for me. I don’t swim and the couch is for me. The water is up to my waist and I hoist myself up onto the couch, slide myself oceanward, people saying things to me to which I pay no attention, patting me on the legs, the sides, some sad, some happy. I hear them, but register nothing. My wet bathing suit sticks to the leather. Everyone is in a bathing suit or less. All in the water but me.

And the body. Handed out, over the heads of the people, hand to hand to hand, my mother. I cannot see her through the hands, the arms, the bodies. She moves slowly seaward.

I have reached the end of the room, the edge of the couch but the people go on, the handing of her body overheads continues out, out, out until I barely see, until the water rises, until the people disappear, until her body slips to the sea.

It's a long way out. You're resting. You have a long time and no where to go. I can only watch as you recede.