Survivor

Tears come easily, like water from the suburban tap, just lift the handle, just sing the song. It’s a pretty melody with a tribal beat and a chorus of strong, pretty women chanting in unison, and their energy, recorded long ago, exploited for years, it comes through me like the dagger of something real. Raw emotion, communicated through melody, told lovingly by thick voices heard with a ripped heart. It moves through me, in through my ears, down to my chest, out my eyes, along the edges of my skin. The colors flash by and I know I must use it, to do anything else is neglect. Precious and fleeting, it cannot be bottled, but it can be channeled, funneled into writing, pushed in and moved around and reconfigured into a human language made of numbers. I grab a hold of the moment, unwilling to let it die beneath the florescent lighting, unwilling to let it evaporate in the night or absorbed into another bite of cake that coats me like a blanket of fog. No, the moment moves like a soft wind, easy to feel and enjoy, easy to dance within, and easily forgotten as a new thought immerges on the fringes of my mind. Is the training taking root? Has some small piece been remembered, internalized, a step towards a second nature…I wish for this. This evening, it can be blamed or accounted for, on hormones and built up forces of primal sex that have yet to spill, and now, I rush towards the tide. The waters come and I fling myself towards the white foam naked and hungry. My ass jiggles with each step on the beach, each narrow print is a plunge into the earth, a temporal dent of existence. Does the womb remember my birth? The people of stone push back and I stay above the crust’s edge. I run naked, covered in the salt of waves and the hope of a virgin. Thick clumps of matted brown hair cling in streaks to my pink cheeks and thin neck, my hammer is by the fire, and the smoke rises behind me like a signal to all those that can see and the very few answer back in thunder and small sparks. Black wisps turn into colored messages, delivering them to the beauty that rests on his bed. Does the conch cry for me? Do the lips that press against it know the value of its sound? The mermaids will be arriving soon, in time for tepid tea and limp cookies and wet kisses from a devoted mouth. On the waves of the coming storm they come, in the arms of dark clouds and hanging on to the earlobes of mighty tritons that tower beyond the clouds. I run towards them, to the crashing black waves, to the shells that rain like pointed drops of hardened semen. The desire for life scrapes across my skin, leaving streaks upon my arms. My breasts are painted in lines of blood, my hips are etched with the marks of their descent. I feel each stinging line as it comes, it enters, it crosses, it falls to the sand. I feel it as I run and I notice it all, the sand which enters between the gaps of my toes, a cool wind nearly pushes me back, but I charge forward again, and here… they come, my ass jiggles as I run. The necklace bounces on my neck as the teeth and shells that conform it clink against in a music of escape, the feathers in my hair dart back and forth in geometric patterns on an invisible canvas. They arrive and the tea is poured, the cakes wait for their mouths, my breasts await their curious hands, my ass hopes for the tritons sword. They come on the blackened waves, they come with the salty tears upon the cheeks of a round mother, it comes with a song, a simple melody that ignites fires among the waves, they surround us, holding the energy in place, and the song crashes towards me with the shell soaked wind.