Word Count: 276
Gray-bellied whales migrate the sky. Swallows like tuna follow their lead. The water is cut with the promise of a storm bringing rain.
Her hair is the color of rust, like the first locust leaves of autumn that free-fall their way to the ground. She is a wonder of nature. A girl with the look of a wise man, the lithe body of a spring sprite. She moves without effort. The breezes blow her along.
I look up as she swims by me. A transparent cloud that’s touched down. She looks straight ahead, glancing neither to her right or her left, her eyes focused faraway on India, her feet following trails made in another time long crumbled to dust and decay.
She has lost love; that I can tell. In the way that she rises above me. In the way it has lifted her out of her grounding, left her floating on the aura of reality that covers the earth so that she barely touches the surface, leaving no footprints of her own. Reaching out, I catch her scent on my fingers. It smells sweet and blue like tears.
I watch her pass into the crowd, disappear into a painting of colors that swirl in her wake. She is nearly gone. Up above, the sea has turned into a maelstrom stripped onto a palette of grays. An aquarium muddy and clouded. A jungle of seaweed tops the trees.
With the first drops of rain I pull my wool blanket up and over my head. I am an indecipherable pile on the sidewalk. A rock in a city of sand that lies under the sea.
