swept away

She placed the black stone in my hand - the kind found along a seashore, smooth from centuries of polishing waves. Tempted like a child, I wanted to skip it along the sparkling surface and follow it to the other side of the world. She laughed, 'go ahead, I want to die, don't you see?', and when I turned with my back to the open sea to respond to her outrageous game, she was gone. I spun around and heaved the beautiful disc as hard as I could with my eyes shut, little white splashes dotting the calm blue, the silent finish so melancholy.

A dry row boat appeared, bobbing ever so queasily, abandoned. No footprints except my own, hold it steady now, her body sprawled out in the bottom on a cushion of more smooth stones I felt compelled to heave, arms above her head, pale dead. I kissed her forehead twice, once for you since the boat had your name scrawled starboard, escorted the vessel knee-deep against the current and shoved it with my bare shoulder into the clouds. A solitary seagull circled above and laughed as I shivered in the cold ashore.

image by Mostafa Habibi