Shells upon the beach...

-Shells Upon The Beach-

Her slick powerful torso shot in spiralling waves around the bay. Each pulsing motion of her heart sped across the water and plunged into that briny place. It was as if she had become the dolphin, and all those yearnings spat themselves upon the sandy reach, with each effulgent leap and every joyful breach.

The stone she held within her heart, the heart shaped stone she had found upon the sand, no longer felt so heavy, no longer sat so cold in the winter winds of that icy and solemn place, and she drifted in the tide for a while, with the roll of the gentle sea easing her beyond the breakers, each sigh lifting the stone, imperceptibly, gently, until it slipped between the red cliff'd walls of her silent shore, and glistened in the far depths once more, and was gone.

One last leap, one last breath, was all it took, and she was gone. Gone into the salty depths, as they fell upon her hands, leaking between her slim delicate fingers, mingling with the waters between the grains of her golden and yielding shore.

In wonder she saw that the sea, that seethed beneath her feet, licked upon those small droplets, embracing them as a mother embraces her young, and wondered how many tears had been shed to fill so great a sea, how many loves had been lost over countless centuries that they now washed upon her bare white toes, in this winter, this winter in which she froze.

The wind whipped in gusting squalls across the bay, and began to dry those ruddy vestiges upon her flushed rosy face. The blackened streaks marked the scars left unseen, deep beneath those salty waves of grief, and made a fractured china doll of her. A broken remnant of Victoriana, sullenly standing upon the waters edge, peering through a cracked face at the white horsed promise of hope, that rose in tides, only to sink again into the unfathomable depths, forlorn.

Why had he gone? She did not know, nor would she ever know, he had come as the sun comes in the spring, warm and tender, riding on a wild cloudless dawn, thrilling her with his rays, filling her veins and sinews, so long left cold, with a heat only new love, new hope, can bring. He had come as a blade of grass comes, bright and luminous from out the muddy ground of winters retreat. A testament of natures cyclical gift of hope. He came with unbridled joy, and it had seemed to her, that the solitude and solemnity of her youth, those long lonely anguished hours of silence, in the dark endless nights of her eternal December, were banished, but for a while, by the herald of this suns golden March.

It was, as a fairy tale is, full of bright hope, and dark remnants of despair, one upon another, shining brightly between dark columns in dim lit passageways of reverie. It could not last, she had known this from the start, for no great love that sweeps majestically within the course of natures hallowed ground lasts beyond its year. It comes from out the silences and solemnity of winters frozen ground, melting into cavernous and raging torrents of passionate might with the spring, crashing through the mountains breach, smashing the fortress boulders with thunderous intolerance, until in bright summer, it whiles away, sweet and sensual, the endless days. Even then she had feared the fall. From the start she had feared, the tumbling icy fall, the fall... So distant in those days, yet ever present, as a shadow is present in the grip of the light as it shines upon the object of ones desire. The fall that would clasp its greedy talons upon her heart, ripping it in ceaseless screams from her tremulous chest, and dashing into the chasm from whence that love and hope did start.

Yet it was not love lost that swept upon her now, nor the broken hopes, the imagined hopes of youthful fancy, and there careless whispering lies, that hide the searing truth of the illuminated sky. It was not that. It was something far more dark and dangerous, far more sinister to a wild heart. It was rather that she was to be married, and in that moment of her cold silent winter, this marriage was the contrariety of that place she had treasured. That warm spring sun, that endless June brocade of flowers and giggling ecstasy. It was, to her, as if she were to be bound into an endless winter, never to taste the fruits of the passion'd vine, nor smell the musk of a sweet oiled lover, slip in tides across her fulsome yielding bosom. Never to nestle in a bed of summer grass, caressed by the fragrance and intoxication of wild flowers and strong hands.

She was to be married, like chattel, like so much common cattle, and where, before, her wild heart had beat to the thrill of her loves former glory, thundering out its sonorous fury, even as memory, now, only a chained and desolate remnant remained.

In that vacuum of space, her chest broke apart, and flooded the sands with its grief. It was as if her heart became one with the sea, so that slowly, yet with mindless surety, her feet followed that distant march, the wild and fervent drum beat, into the depths, one solemn step at a time.

Graceful as a swift upon the summer air she came, powerful and majestic, no turbulence nor torpid vestige of doubt raced within her now. In play she came, and as she came, she tore upon the ragged waters surface with such ease. Her length slender and firm. She came in a great arc of power and purpose, to greet this wild heart that had sort her out, as a wild thing might know another, as life might know the edge of death, the forge of its freedom. In that moment, that final moment of numbed remembrance, two wild souls met. It seemed in that moment of last hope, that her heart, her cold and failing heart, filled once more with a radiance, and bathed her soul in the soaking warmth of a golden light, in the chilling bitterness of those frigid waters.

Her golden waving locks swam in somnolent streams over the alabaster remnants of her fading glory, and as she sank into that icy reach, she felt a nuzzling delta of silken smooth grace, powerful and gentle, take her cold numbed hand, guiding her into that deep blue womb. Two wild hearts, one full, one fleeting, both now retreating into the mothers womb, the endless blue womb, the womb of all souls. Two wild hearts descending, into the wild hearted ocean, the mother of all wild hearts, from whence all are born, and all, in there time, return.

© Richard Michael Parker 2011

Artwork by Izabella