and Ages

I hear waves crashing to the shore. All night I hear them; I cannot explain it. The sea outside lies still, the woods silenced, there is no sound. If you hold a shell to your ear, can you, too, hear the steady beat of the ocean? Perhaps old age and tinnitus catch up with me. Perhaps it is merely that lurking insanity, finally able to make its voice heard when urban cacophony lies miles away.

The entire day passed in a fog of indifference and rain clouds that never made good on their threats. But evening came with such a calm to it, such soft August sunlight, I made my way down the slippery hill for a swim. Not a sound, not another human around, I slipped out of my clothes and into the water; it deceived me with its velvety demeanor, it was freezing. I twirled around underneath the surface as the last rays of the sun set fire to the trees. By the time I came up, it had set behind the metropolitan area in the west, the light was gone, the day over. My skin felt entirely new around my limbs, my heart felt old in its rusted cage of ribs. Such are our lives.

The blood courses slowly,
in the end.