SWABS

It has always been with me. Since the moment I surfed into life through my mother’s womb. It has never left. Not once. Many a night I have drifted to sleep on its horizon lullabies - salty-pink peaches of adventure.

To this day, at what feels like the end, it is here.

It pools in the pores of my bones and ebbs through my blood. I can taste it at the back of my throat: briney, sweaty, and caked in algae. Defiant of the mop’s floral pall, and my daily swill of peppermint.

It speaks to me through the face on the clock.

*

T - I c k

*

T - O c k

*

T - I c k

*

T - O c k

*

And bites at my ankles with its teeth as it mocks me from the floor above - growling in the back-and-forth, back-and-forth of the vacuum cleaner.

Its insatiable appetite rumbling down the walls, growing closer and closer until it thunders overhead in a rage of determined earnest, clawing life’s litany of shrapnel from its carpet bed.

It does not hear me. I tumble in and out of its metronomic fury, unsure which way is up. Swirling amongst the grains ... and crumbs ... and toenail clippings. All surface noise muffled by its pressure inside my head.

I feel for the edge of my board to cling on, to hang ten blue knuckles around the ledge. Face up towards the whitewashed sky and the hard yellow ball of judgment. It bleeds white trails and fractals as I lurch in spits of grey salt spray mists.

A warm trickle of wee stings my jelly of sores.

A seagull glides by and stops at my side, red-eyed and curious about the state of my flesh. It shrieks to its flock. A cold, guttural caw. They scare me when they scream and flap like that.

I must have drifted too far from the shore. They circle and peck at me as I bob about. In and out. Up and down. Mesmerised by the glints on the waves.

The cold, dark, black swirls beneath. A bottomless pit of dread and relief. I float on the membrane of its tension. Sinking and rising. Sinking and rising.

A breeze tickles through the air.

Fingers through my lost hair.

My skin warms as the waves drop

beneath the sun's cloak of sepia.

I glide

over flat, unguent sheets, listening to the tinkle of chatter and sighs that glisten between soft silhouettes - palm trees disguised as nurses.

***

Authors note - This poem is meant to be disjointed inside the stanzas, with varying gaps between the lines/sentences. I have had a dabble adding *** etc to illustrate the breaks but it doesn't look right all the way through.

Apologies you aren't getting the full flavour of the intended form.

Please let me know if there is anyway around this tech problem.

Cheers, CJ xx