Tide

A literary adaptation of a short screenplay I recently wrote, albeit much darker.

Two bodies – cohabiting in silence like the junkies they are but on different highs.

Adjacent yet incompatible. Souls on split frequencies. As intimate as the black noise between radio stations.

They sit on sand that remembers better lovers. An awkward distance divides them – close enough to touch, too far to feel. The sun barfs soft amber vomit across the ocean's scarred surface, a cracked mirror brimming with nostalgia. The light glares off the blinding light like an interrogation lamp. Water licks their toes. Water eavesdrops like the Gestapo. A breeze whisks sickly with somber tension.

She speaks like she's underwater. “Are you going to say it?”

“I'm struggling to find the right words”, he says, as if into a paper bag.

“The right words find themselves.” She places her chin on her knees like a skull on a mantle.

Neither move. Neither talk. Neither regulate their breathing. Their hearts thump like deer in a rifle scope. The ocean pulses in and out, harshly, a dying videotape.

She asks, quieter now, “Can you give me time?”

To her – and perhaps to his shadow – he replies, “This is like trying to hold smoke.”

“What is?”

“Wading through this moment. It's like I'm plodding through static.”

The waves crash calmly but impolitely, mimicking the chaos of their fragile minds. Their voices are porcelain – delicate, trembling, and prepared to break.

“This is how I am”, she exhales. “It's how I've always been. I'm a vault, full of diamonds or uranium – depending who opens. My key is hidden somewhere far away. But I know it exists. And only Time can retrieve it. Time is a patient locksmith but it returns with the key faster after each trek. It does take patience. I do take patience. I know that. I'm sorry I cost so much, I am.”

“It's not about time, it's about...”, he stops, to scratch his scalp like a gold miner digging for his thoughts. “I don't know. The future? I guess it is about time.”

“You don't see a future with me?” A piece of her porcelain cracks. And it's loud.

There's comfort in his frustration as he denies her assumption. “It's not that.”

She challenges him, a matador with a cozy blanket. “Then say what you need to say. Tell me what must be told. Give me something I can grasp, even if it breaks.”

His interruption cuts itself out like a razor blade. “I'm leaving. And I can't stay here.”

“What does that mean?” She asks, her nose a runaway slave.

The ocean seems louder. Proof it's listening.

“I'm crowded, I'm queasy. I can't feel, talk, or think. I'm without form, I'm a void, a darkness with a face. I'm losing touch of everyone and everything around me. I'm not sure what I am. I'm not sure how I am. Maybe when I say here, it's not this place; it's not you, it's not us. It's my being. I have to figure it out. I need to go somewhere and go there alone. And I'm not sure for how long.”

The ocean slurps up their knees. Feeding on their sorrow.

“When will you leave?”

“Once summer bleeds out.”

“Can you keep me until then?” Her voice bandaged hope.

“Keep you?” He almost laughs, but not unkindly.

“Don't stop seeing me.”

“What would be the point?”

The sea is up to their ankles now, testing their weight. One of them is already lighter.

She's holding back fire behind her eyes. “I have an idea.”

“What?”

“Let's meet here. Once a week, same day every week. No communication in between. I'll ask you one question at the start of every rendezvous. They'll be questions of value. Questions only you can answer. Questions that matter. Questions with purpose. We can sit or walk as you answer them.”

An eyebrow of his lifts like a construction crane. “Questions such as?”

“Ones that gut you. Ones that unwrap your bones.”

“What if nothing changes?” His voice the dial tone of doubt.

“If you still feel that hole deep within you, then do what you have to do. I won't intervene. But you can't ever contact me again.”

“And if things do change?”

“Change in what way?”

“Your whole game reverses my sentiment.”

“I'll be here. Unlocked.”

“I'll think about it.”

She stands. Brushes off the sand like flakes of dead skin. “Alright. I'll leave you to it then.”

He snatches her hand with tender uncertainty. “Don't leave yet.”

“What else is left for either of us to say?”

“I just want to watch the sky die with someone.”

She hesitates. She looks at our star – remembering its eventual death would only be eight minutes away – and sees it still gurgling on its own light, and realizes it's been staring since the start of this trainwreck. She looks at him, then at the light. Then at him again. She sits beside him. Their knees touch. The universe exhales.

The sun sinks into the horizon like a hopeless addict into bathwater, releasing the last of the day's warm breath before the cold begins.