Old Man and the Sea?

At first, I imagined I was swimming in words. I don’t remember when I realized I was drowning. An old man leans heavy against a lamppost, buzzing flies circle him like electron predators on a harried atom, and every passerby keeps distance, fearing covalence. His cheeks were sandpaper, heavy black bundles sandbagged his hawkish nose; with mottled hands he clasped a message in a bottle of rum, a memory of sea, shipwreck, and a hail mary tossed into the sea’s hungry maw.

Every description saves the eyes for last, finding some magic in the stare, but there was no boy in his eyes anywhere, not anymore. These eyes, they’ve seen war, and sickness and death knocking at every door, young and old. With indiscriminate injustice, death trampled them all, and if you looked closely, the shadows in his eyes was a phantasmagoria pantomime of their lives, played over and over.

Beside him, the boy, tugging his tattered sleeve. Hey mister, here’s my loaf of bread to eat, will you share?

Even touch, even words barely drag those ancient bones back from memory hell.

But they do.

I’m a cheap mimicry, a muddled mime, a messy mirror layered in grime and webbed with a thousand silver cracks. I’m a silver child, a blueblood fae with wild hair and forgotten name, I speak in song and sing in terran-sway; my muscles are harp strings the music plays, and the sky is a gunshot every morning I awake. Tonight, I’m out of words, because everything I open my mouth to say drowns me in intransigent immobility. I’m a ghost of a riddle trapped in a puddle on the most arid halcyon day. How long can you hold your breath beneath the magnificent waves – or do I even want to try?

This was the best Monday I’ve had in a long time, even if work was impossible, and I didn’t get any ice cream. I’m excited for Wednesday.

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/05/old-man-and-the-sea/