1 September 2012
She picks her way through the rocks behind the dune, A frail, lonely wisp of a person Nothing more, I think, than a shell, As she reaches each hand forward To steady A frame that sways like a dying sap in winter.
She knows, she will not live long enough to see the sun rise again. that, as the moon looks down, ashamed, Unharmed, unaffected by all that happens below She will drift away Carried off by the night in a silken carrycot, And she will be cradled in the honeycomb of stars above forever.
The sea breeze blows through her shallow frame, Bitter and icy to her, It whips her dress behind her, wrapping it around her legs. She sees the blood, The ash, The mud That is smeared across its once silky folds She sees it make out a map Of how she has come to die here On this star-crossed night When she is no more than fourteen, She thinks.
She has seen all hell, She has nearly died under tumbling bombs That fell from the heavens As if god himself was hurling them down. They whirl around in the air, An aerobatics show of the most morbid kind Screaming like arrogant children, Killing like arrogant men When they hit the ground, Plummeting, plunging into the lives of the people below Destroying everything they can see Everything they can.
Guns that rattle the bones, Shake the foundations Pierce anything, everything, Make lace cobwebs of men. There is no way to block a bullet When you are made of flesh When you are screaming Calling for mercy Surrender Give it all When the gunner cant hear you Over his gun
Gasses: noxious, yet subtle, like prowling cats Stalking, killing from the inside You do not know until you are dead, That the cat has got you And curiosity Never killed the fucker. You try, you cover your mouth, You hold your breath and swim through it, But you can't last. You can't float. Don't try. Close your eyes and go to sleep.
She crawls, nearly gone, over the last rock, and Falls onto the sloping sand of a dune. She hadn't noticed the rain start to fall But now she sees it prick the sand Like bullets, But not sink in to the beaches body. No, nothing hurts anyone this close to the ocean Because the ocean has no memory. Can't hold a grudge, she thinks.
The sand is soft, and moulds around her. She breathes properly for the first time in eight years, Filling her lungs with icy, crisp air, Feeling everything inside her Crunch and pop into place, Like an old machine filled with rust. and Crawls, weary to the shore.
She only saw the sea once; She was four, And it had been sunny, glistening with phosphorescence. She had been sticky from ice cream, And her hair had been bleached blonde By the loving sun, Floating like a yellow leaf in the bluest of lakes
Truth be told, she hadn't seen the sun for years now Hadn't been warm in so long And her hair hung limp and dirty, Clumping around her arms and neck.
Slowly, she slides into the seas shallow foam It is beautiful It is taking away everything she has seen Leaving her as nothing but a leafs skeleton Fragile, but perfectly formed and free.
How it began, as nothing but a disagreement between the two leaders Elanor Drint and Rutinor Skye. But it grew And the Drints got better. Stronger. Like a vine, it coiled around Skye, and his men Strangled, squeezed the life out of them, And sprouted propaganda, Lies, secret plans, spies, elections Bases, weapons, rationing, Starvation, murder, black markets, But she was forgetting it all Seeing her family die Seeing her home burnt Seeing herself kidnapped Tortured Escape Run
She reopens her weary eyes, And sees her mothers locket tangled in her once beautiful brown hair And sees the salty sea foam washing away the filth That clings to her linen dress. She slowly but surely unhooks each button Her fingers gnarled and grazed, And sees the reason for her dying here A bullet wound, No more that two centimetres across, Right through the stomach Given to her by a Drint soldier as she ran for her life And the last scrap of pride That she held between her gritted teeth As she dragged herself to the coast.
And so, she lies, the sea washing away her fear, But taking with it, her life, And she dies through the night, Nothing more than a lily-white skeleton With lily-white skin stretched between the bones And she sinks into the honeycomb of stars above And they whisper her name "Maria"
A soldier from Drint is walking along the beach. He sees a dead body, probably washed up from the harbour, And pads across the sand to salvage what he can from it. 'Just a Skye' he snorts, pulling the gold chain and locket from around her neck, watching the links snap and scatter into her hair, where they glitter like fallen stars He shoves in the waistband of his khaki trousers. And slopes off over the rocks.
Maria By The Sea • Opuss № I