Stuck

In between two rocks. One is jagged and pocked. Iridescent under the moon. The other is smooth and gray. Like a dark cloud, stretched and spun through a spindle. Pink seaweed wraps around its base like consoling arms. I'm stuck. Lodged between them when I fell overboard, almost 2 years ago. Each of my hands rest upon one rock. And my body is cold and frigid when the tide laps against me. Spray of salt lingers on my mouth and everything I taste is bitter. Ocean drops roll and dry. Like falling stars across my skin. They leave stains of sun baked salt like tiny silver flecks, down my arms, through my hair and near my eyes. All I see is bitter. I scintillate at sunset. Another sailer off in the distance mistakes me for a mermaid, peeking through the rocks. He thinks the pink seaweed twisting around my legs are fins. But I am nothing phantasmal. I call out but my song for help besets him. Thinking of me now as a siren, he quickly turns away from his curiosity and watches me with a leering gaze as my image shrinks in the increasing distance.

Maybe I have become a mermaid. Or a siren. Or both. I have lingered in this sea for so long now. And I have forgotten where I am going or where I have come from. Perhaps I've been here all along. If I am a mermaid, I can swim down, into the deep. And stay there, amidst the coral reefs and celestial creatures. Abandon boat. That boat that waits for me to return. Like a loyal companion. Rocking in the distance on the stream of liquid sunlight. I know I'll find my way again. Back to it. Back to our journey. But for now, my boat waits and rocks and sways. I wish I was in it now. Rock me to sleep like a child. Watch the birds fly overhead. Go wherever the wind blows us. Close my eyes and let the tangerine blanket of the sun lull me to sleep.

But I'm not in the boat. I am in the cold. I am in the sea. The only warm embrace is the sunlight streaming through tendrils of my wet hair. And even the sun is descending. Below the horizon. And the wind dances around me like a mischievous child and whispers,

"Wave goodbye.
Sing your siren song and hope that a sailor will find you
before the stars dot the sky."

I look back, behind me. At my dark past. The smooth gray rock, like a dark cloud, reminds me. And I want to rest my head on it for a little while. Will this salty sea turn my heart into a pillar of salt? Like Lot's wife? No. That is not me. I must be salt and light. I refuse to turn back. No turning back.

I know the force of the high tide will eventually release me from the grip of these binary rocks. I can't stay stuck forever. And I will swim back to the boat which is shrinking in the increasing distance.