The Drowning

written by Melinda Davila

Scalding sand seared by sizzling sunstreaks
Scorches supple satin of red, ripe feet.
Baked toes dig forcefully into the scattered sand
Reaching the less tropic temperatures beneath.
From the sweltering shore she sweats.
Sticky oiliness smears her skin
And dampens the silky hair on the nape of her neck.
And all this while the sea shimmers and sways.

In the end, the child answers the summons of the sea.
A plunge into a world of ebony wetness
stinging-biting-frigidness
swirling, gushing, splashing
- bitter, salty suffocation.
Buoying, bobbing, up and down
A gush of air - a view of land
then blackness, numbness, muteness

Screams!!

Absence of sound
Flailing, lunging
then falling.
Always, always falling
longing for an element of sureness - out of danger.
Easy breath of familiarity
then of foreign iciness, choking
muffling screams stifling life.
Then
slowly, slowly
onyx and ink
the deafening silence
sightlessness
suffocation.
Her limp hand dropped into the sea...
...then nothing.

The charcoal hands of the ocean had claimed her.

And every time I sit by the sea,
Again I watch the six year old child
Dance into death
In the polar hands of a raven stranger