A Knife Dreamlet

A Knife Dreamlet
by Pat A Physics

Using the tip of a blade, cut a small hole in the sail. Look carefully through
the hole at the birds. It is cold, you are shaking, but you can shift around your
ballast if you can’t steady your gaze. Funny birds who drink your thoughts
with perky zeal. Their heads move to invisible jazz music. It makes you
sick and tired of the sea. It’s specific to the tiny bird head movements. Anger
makes you jump out at them. When they fly into the sky, you moan. No one
can hear you, and everything is creaking, slapping, and forming waves. Your
wave is lost in it all. Becoming smaller and smaller like a balloon that an
infant has let go into a cloudless sky. You are now on the other side of the
sail and the hole before you has a little flap that angles to the left where you
moved your blade. There is a triangular shadow that forms and you can see
the threads of the cloth. Your limbs are heavy and numb, and your head aches.
You look out at the people you love. They are all unconscious. Some of them
look peaceful as they rest, puffing up their lips over and over. You puff out
your lips and think about your last kiss. It was after wine and you had been
dancing. Now your lips are chapped and are raw from the wind. But you try
to go back to the candle light, and the music that spun everyone around in
circles. The circles that shaped your fleeting moments. This icy circle that
has brought pain and crust. You want to jump into the water and feel the
currents swallow you whole. The currents are swelling bellies. Filled with
infinite sleep and dream, boundless time and space, and probably fish. You
close your eyes tightly to the sea and feel the uselessness. The uselessness
is climbing up your throat, into your ears, eyes and mouth. You stop.