“Sand”

Floating; floating in an infinite life; bobbing in a vast expanse of sand. Ocean, but sand; desert, but liquid like the sea. Chained, not moving, but bobbing, floating, though anchored by unmovable bindings. I feel them around my wrists and ankles; I am floating in a sea but I cannot swim. Floating in sand. Sand in my ears, sand between my toes, sand under my knees. Anything could be under there. Monsters could be under the sand, and I would not know, nor would I be able to know. Nor would I be able to look, for there is sand in my eyes. Nor would I be able to scream, for there is sand in my mouth. The sand controls me and I am powerless, bobbing in this ocean that is not an ocean that is not a liquid but it is quicksand, though I am floating. The only thing I am safe from is drowning — no, not even that. Sometime, my body could just give out and, still trapped by chains by ropes by anchors, I’d drift down to wherever the bottom is. Maybe eaten by a monster on the way. Who knows. I can’t kill myself, nothing to do it with. I don’t have the courage to hold my breath. Maybe I could just stop fighting, maybe I could drown “on accident.” But, no, something holds me back. Some grain of sand, grain of not-sand not-hope deep in my rock-hard-heart that prevents me from dying on the spot. I float, helplessly, as the waves roil and boil around me, the sand hot under my back, no clothes on my back to my name to my body. I wonder what the chains are made of, if they will ever dissolve under the force of the sand. Maybe I will dissolve. Is that possible? Could the sand wear away at me and erode my and chip at my rock-hard-heart until there is nothing left but

sand?

Maybe I would like that. But for now I would like to keep bobbing. Vast, miraculous, sand, it is. Sometimes I like the sand, but then I remember the monsters. Maybe there is a giant fish, like in oceans. But this is not an ocean, this is land (land?) so there must be worms. But the worms have more room, this desert being as deep as a sea, so they must be giant worms. So big I am only a snack to them, as krill is to a whale. I am like a lonely juvenile seagull just growing in its scrappy flight feathers, struggling to take off from the water as it paddles around, looking for crumbs to eat. It squawks, pointlessly, for it knows no one will hear, nor would they care to help. Would they care? Would anyone care if they could hear my sand-gritted cries? Would they hear how my vocal folds have sand deep in the creases? Even if I escape and I am away from this infinite life for fifty hundred years, I will still feel the sand in my feet in my legs in my ears creeping into my brain. How does anyone feel calm around sand? There is so much of it, more than trees, more than molecules, more than stars, more than anything, there is sand. People say differently, but no, I know there is so. much. sand. I am here. I am in the sand. I have counted every grain. If it took me a second to count each grain, I have lived a million years.

I watch for the monsters through the back of my head. Giant worms, especially. I bob and float and sigh and relax, pretending I am at the beach. I am in the beach. I decide not to drown. I wonder when someone will hear my call and bring me water and clothes and how long has it beem? How can I survive without water and clothes? Maybe the sand has nutrition. It is bigger than stars, after all. Stars are only twinkling specks in the sky, but sand is here. If I look a grain of sand in the eye, it is miles bigger than the sun. Suns, I am surrounded by, enveloped by sunny desert beach

sand.
I am floating in a sea but I cannot swim and it is

sand.

Maybe I will dissolve

sand.

Would they hear

sand.

I am

sand.

Chained in the hidden in the trapped in the hidden in the floating in the scared in the

sand.

By Cartwheel
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