Everything is silent, and I can hear my heart slowly start to become calm. The seaweed wraps around my legs and arms like a blanket while I burrow my feet deep into the sand. I feel my body float beneath the water, rocking with the undertow that brings me towards the shore and back. I imagine the old house being torn to bits, crunching underneath machine jaws, like a shark devouring a seal.
I imagine my uncle Caleb sailing above me in The Codfather, disappearing into the horizon. I imagine my mother, smiling at me as she kneels in the garden picking strawberries. Her loose button-down shirt that was once my father's flapping in the breeze and her feet blackened on the bottom from walking barefoot. That was the only way to do it, she would say. "You have to become a part of the soil to understand how things grow," she would tell me.
I feel my lungs start to burn as I pull my feet out of the sand, bobbing up out of the water like a buoy, I open my eyes, the salt stinging. The air is cool as it blows over the water and it makes mist from the small waves as they cap. I wade out towards the shore, leaving behind my blanket of weeds floating in a dark green blob. I sit on the sand, it is still warm from the long day. The sun is nearly set but the water gleams and reflects a collage of orange, red, and yellow.
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Fiddle Sticks and Random Bits
Short StoryMuch like a junk drawer, you never know what you will find when you open it up! A collection of short stories and poetry. There is something for everyone in here.
