Lost

At first, it was the odd tear, as insignificant and soft as the bubble that steadfastly clung to the inside of the glass – its slippery raft – as, day by day, the water staled.
But they kept coming … glassy bulbs racing like November raindrops on a pane, salty and hot, raking her skin raw and seaming her brokenness in frosted silver satin.

Her bare soles slapped and splashed on the softening wood, little tails flicking up like wet whips, eddying around her ankles, and soon she was wading, pushing against the weight of water, pebbles now tumbling with a slow, silent clatter beneath her bruised feet, the walls gusted away leaving too much space for her smallness, the ceiling thinned to sky, scudding with ragged cloud.

Her hair beaded in salt, she succumbed to the breath of the waves as they fought over her like a rag doll, limbs dangling beneath the pulsating seaskin, her white face no more than a pearl in the palm of the ocean. Raucous gulls shrieked with cruel mirth as glugs of brine swilled into her mouth and hurled into her eyes, searing them, clogging her lashes, slapping her with the thrash of saturated hessian.

She deserved it all.

And still she cried, and the ocean swelled.

Nothing solid could prop her up any more. There was just sky and sea, sewn together by the horizon.

Her life had been swallowed. She had felt all the pieces peel away, drifting like a shipwreck.

Lost

With limp fingers, she hooked the key from her neck. It judged her with its single eye, whispering in a rusty voice, as hoarse as the waves, that it was already too late to find her way home.

Then it slipped away like a fish, and she followed, dropping to the dark bed that would welcome her bones.