Not Much of Anything but Open Water

It is very cold, and the wind flays my cheeks as I walk down Cherry Street. I don’t know if I can like it down here. It’s industrial and lonely until you get to the beach car park and see the water, and there are hardly ever any other people to make you feel like you are still a part of something. Someone told me that the police used to take people down here after they picked them up so they could punish them with abandon, in peace. I can imagine that, that power in the dark, with only the noise of the water to drown the body blows.

When I walked down to Cherry Beach in spring, I passed the Mini Blossom Park and saw the cherry blossoms. They were so happy—puffs of breath and grandmother hair. It’s early winter now, and I can see as I near the little park that the trees are naked and cold. The grandmother hair is in my head these days. It feels puffy and woolly and stuck, and I didn’t get to do what I planned to do today because I couldn’t push through the thick of it.

The new tattoo on my back hurts. I wonder if it needs some cream and a bandage. I don’t remember getting it, but that’s not surprising. There are blanks, these days, between the light. I almost like the way I don’t seem to have to deal with the whole of anything anymore. I could see the shape of the wound in the mirror when I turned away, looking over my shoulder. My back is clean and bony. It will always be like this.

I can hear the lapping of the water, wet and gentle against the sand, and can smell rocks and stones. Beyond that is the almost-moan you can hear if you listen closely to an ocean at night, from all the things that are happening beneath its surface. Move closer, says the voice that is always with me now: Move closer. You deserve it. Move closer.

I want to spread out across the water and let my body become wavy and romantic. My hair will tendril and float like a long sea plant. It is alive and so is the water, but this city doesn’t feel alive like that anymore. I know the salt will refresh me; I have been needing refreshment for so long. Water washes away what people are thinking and all the wool and pulse in my head, even when I am just in the shower or beneath rain clouds without an umbrella. I’ll swim for a long time to really clean it all away. I don’t think it will be as cold in the sea as it is out here in the air.

I have reached the car park. There is a high street lamp above me, pouring white light across the gravel. There are no cars, but plenty of tyre tracks and littered chip packets. I can see a sock and a pair of sandals someone has left to die alone. The sock is frozen. I pick it up and crunch it a little to feel something between my fingers—I like the delicate slices of ice that coat it. Someone wore this on their foot, once, not that long ago. I am wearing two pairs of socks: one blue burly pair and one white cotton pair with dirty soles. My feet are still cold.

The sand is cool and wet when I pick some up to let it go. I imagine I am the sand and someone is picking me up and letting me go, scattering every grain of me below them. I pull off my coat and my boots. I walk towards the ocean; I dive.