A Wave Goodbye

I don’t remember much of that night, to be honest. The wind was too loud, the rain was too heavy, the screams were too deafening. The only image that stands out in my mind was when I watched the waves carry you away. A rag doll stuffed with meaty cotton, not alive but adorned with glistening eyes, only I knew there was nothing left behind them. I watched as you danced through the ocean: the gushing of the gray waves, the flap of your shell of a body, the gushing gray waves, the gushing...

They say it’s almost impossible to find you. There’s just too many bodies down there, they tell me. They tell me I should move and start a new life, buy a new home, marry a new man. But this is my home I tell them, he was my life I say.

I dream of the waves. I wake up in a cold sea of salt sweat gasping for air, just like I saw you do. I thrash, I kick, I gasp. My wild clutches feeling for your hands, your face, your hair. Some times I feel you’ll come back to me, and slip into our bed with a sweet “I missed you.”
I don’t know how I survive the nights. The dreams, they keep coming, asphyxiating me. They creep up on me, gentle and blue. Then turn black and gray, violent, swallowing me whole. You appear to save me, but your helpless like me. We can do nothing but watch ourselves get carried away. We’re rag dolls, you and I. Except your dead and I’m alive, you’re in heaven and I’m in hell. But we’re one in the same, just a rag doll.

I’m stuffed with meaty cotton, alive and adorned with glistening eyes, only I know there’s nothing left behind them. I’m breathing in air but tasting salt water, I’m talking but gushing bubbles, I’m walking but floating to nowhere.

I’m lucky to be alive they tell me, but you’re even luckier that you’re dead.