Ocean in White Chair
The music starts inaudibly, as all music starts. She thinks: tonight there is a hammock, there is memory: they are all glassy rocking, undertow, it is mysterious, nothing in the living room looks wet. They can never talk about it later, they are going to be fools, it is the saddest music, they are smart enough to come back. It is an act of memory, done not with the mind, but with the body. With two bodies they are black water under night; they are the sound the seashell makes, the ear it presses to. They are aqua, ultra. Seaweed flying through like lace. Like stray hair. They pull it back. There is a lie of whispers, but not here. The ocean is the grave of all tears, tears are a memory of ocean. Elegy isn’t even elegy, but something deeper: this is what they touch. It is the only music but it is not really sad. They do not cry, they do not have to cry, they are the same wave. Later they cannot talk about it, say the wrong things; make promises they cannot keep or promise not to promise. Anything they say flattens into ribbons, curls away. It is this simple: start by asking her about her day, start by asking him about his day, and then begin. Listen with your fingers. The sea is dangerous, they say, but not if you’re the sea. What they give each other they will never see in a mirror, they are clothed, it doesn’t matter, from the depths of what they’re doing they are pausing, they look up, they did not know the ocean looked like this.
- Sarah Maclay
Copyright © 2006 Sarah Maclay. All rights reserved
from The Laurel Review