Tentacles

This is me being upset that I missed two weeks of posting and figuring what the hell I'll post on a day that's not my own because it's better than nothing at all again. Hope you like it. Sorry for the delay and the fact that I am imposing on Jess' day.

I slide through the water. I am graceful, I am beautiful.

It’s dark. The light never comes down this far and I slide, I slip, I slope down and down to the deep parts I love. No one lives here. There is only me, with all the ocean’s ravines to dance in as far to the bottom as I want. My ravines. My dance.

The water pulses with the vibrations of the earth, so faint and undetectable, even for me where there is no other living thing to disturb the tremors with disruptive shifts. Where I am no one moves. I can float and feel the planet’s heartbeat humming to me in the soft songs of aging, a gentle grumble of sleepy acceptance. Sometimes when I dip deep into the darkness, where even my toughened skin feels the freeze, I stay a while and feel with the vibrations. When the loneliness becomes too much, and my hearts have slowed to stupor, I wrap my tentacles round the rocks and rest. My lidless eyes stare into the dark and I think to the earth you’re still young and will live for so very long.

Then I push off from the rock with numbed flesh and twist and twirl my deep-sea pirouette up and out of the ravine. The blood takes a while to flow back into the tips of my tentacles. It’s been taking longer and longer these days, just like it’s been getting more and more difficult to hold my boneless body straight, to propel myself down deep in the first place. I’ve spent a long time in these depths, dancing with the earth, feeling nothing but its song, seeing nothing but its shadowed rocks.

I think of the parts of my rubbery body that no longer function as they once did, and I feel the song embrace me with its water-born chords like a lullaby, carrying me across the ocean floor. The currents slide me through the water. I am graceful, I am beautiful. I am old.