Ella Mar

I walk upon the beach tracing the patterns of the waves, feeling the sand pulled from beneath my feet in the constant ebb and flow and the undertow that gnaws. I look seaward. The ocean is supposed to be blue. It should be blue. If the world were willing to meet my expectations, it would be blue as blueness itself.

Walking on this beach does nothing to mend me. There is nothing here, nothing at all. The vastness and power of the ocean make me insignificant. I am not free. I am not wise. I just don't understand, like a rat in a cage.

I need nothing more complicated than a Freytag triangle to explain my life. It is an ardor, a specter, a long, slow dissipating. I turn the page to read another chapter, but the story is over. The flyleaves are as blank as night.

There is no lesson to be learned from el mar. Or is it la mar? There is only vastness, emptiness, and the wait for the hand from above that will one day come to squash me flat. This beach is not profound; for all its noise, it is silent. There are only lines that divide one colored vapor from another. There are only the places that she will never go, the sand upon which she will never walk, and the water that would not be blue enough for her either.

This is my destiny and final purpose, spoken by the design of the tide: to wear away the earth until all is ground into dust.