It’s so hot out, yet I’m still so cold. Numb to the fingers and toes. Frost-bitten while the heat makes waves in the air all around. Look left. Look right. Pebbles as far as the eye can see. I’m just sitting on the beach, wishing for waves. Wishing for even a drop of the ocean to find me from the sky, where that all lives now.
The air tastes like salt, the sky has a green tinge, like it’s sick, too. I swear I can see my bones through my skin. Can taste my tongue like it’s meat. That’s how hungry you get, how hungry I am.
Then I blink and the water’s there again. The pebbles warm my toes. The birds call and my friends do, too. I shield my eyes from the sun. Eat a sunflower seed, spit it out. Look at the words from my book and wonder where I’d gone, just then.
Did I see something? I ask. Is that what it’s going to be?
And it’s like this every day, I tell you. The flashes. The cold in heat. The going away and coming back. Double-vision of skeletons and lovely smiles. Caught-in-the-throat kind of fear, wondering, did anyone else see it too?
Does anyone else see it too?
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Jessica Barratt 