Sea Monster
While out seashell-gazing and reminiscing on the days when I was one of two thrill-seekers of the sea, I look up, glance moonward and wonder if I see you gliding my way through the ocean water. I strip down to my shorts and before I know it I’m stiff and cold in the water with beams from the lighthouse revolving in my right peripherals and seaweed tangled at my soles. My mind scoffs at the self-made splashes wetting my cheeks.
There are steady waves as you get closer and the water drops fixed on your dark back catch light and gleam like stars, as if you were netted by the same series of constellations interwoven with myths of spirited men: Perseus who beheaded Medusa; Scorpio who stung Orion’s vanity; Hercules who slew Draco the Dragon; and Chiron who, after being wounded, offered to take Prometheus’s place of torment. We would whisper these stories, aspiration accentuating our voices.
I would straddle your back, and we would scour the Great Sea, illuminating starfish, untangling jellyfish, searching for any adventure that would catapult us into the stars.
Suddenly, I realize your eyes, as dark and wide as cauldrons, conjure up a scene remembered, but not witnessed: I’m standing on the dock, mere nervousness making it lurch. It’s January (murky waters of Lake Chickamauga) and the neighborhood boys out for midnight skinny-dipping, innocent bravado and mischievous laughter splashing in the quiet. “It’s not that cold, you wuss. Jump in!” But it’s not the cold water that I dread, but something deeper and darker than a lake lurking in me, in my spirit, cold enough to peel back my skin and turn me into all nerves and bones and water.
The memory recedes and you leave with it.
The waves cause brief splashes, later rippling into nothing; the calm revives itself, reflecting the interwoven constellations-myths. Our story tells itself.
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