[Z]
Photo of the tide line on a wide, sandy beach. The sea is to the left, and the sand to the right. The sand is wet and rippled and there are a few scattered birds in the distance. The sky is blue with some cumulous clouds on the horizon.
This is where it all began. Where [Z] lay at the edge of two worlds for 15 days. Just a small thing then. Neither dead nor alive. Liminal and without meaning. When the water washed over them, they belonged once more to the old world. When it pulled back, they found themselves anew.
In the beginning, [Z] was one atom thick. So much pressure on top of them, but still they rose to the surface. They lay at the top of everything, watching the blue, feeling the wet; still, inert, but alive. When the ground beneath them warmed and dried, [Z] felt the hard granularity of the sand. Heard the movement of the earth behind it all, in the same way you might hear a seagull behind your drifting thoughts. Always [Z] stared up at the blue.
After 15 days, [Z] rolled further inland. Just a little, just enough, to the dunes. It was a southwesterly which carefully carried them there, lovingly and with a purpose known only to the winds. [Z] lay there amidst the grasses, the insects, and the litter and just felt it all: the warm and the cold and the flux. Carried on seeing the blue and feeling the hard yellow, anticipating nothing in the spirit of acceptance.
One day [Z] was bigger than an atom. Thicker, more broad, more full somehow. [Z] could not touch themselves, but they felt the swirling of their insides in the same way they had once felt the last-ditch swirling of a low and lazy tide. [Z] began to wonder what it was that they were: a part of the ocean or a part of the land? Where did this expanding anchor them to? They continued to lay there, with their growing, swirling insides, until one day a crow came and picked [Z] up.
The crow flew for 40 miles until it reached a forest where it swooped down and found a pile of moss. The crow pecked at the moss to loosen it and then placed [Z] underneath it for safekeeping. [Z] felt secure for a while: embraced, warm, secret in the darkness of the peaty forest floor; until one day a squirrel came and dug [Z] up.
The squirrel held [Z] in its two paws, examining [Z] with each beady eye. And then finally, deciding that [Z] was worth no further examination, the squirrel discarded [Z] before bounding off in search of more edible things. [Z] lay there, feeling the leaves and the soft floor beneath them, finding the dampness fulfilling somehow.
As the days and weeks rolled by, slugs lazily munched at [Z], beetles cut shapes, and lichen slowly grew on [Z]’s middle until [Z] became misshapen and messy, quite unlike the small, flat thing which had emerged from the sea. [Z] carried on wondering who it was they were and where it was they should call home. And wondered if perhaps this uncontrollable and eventful change was it. Eventually, an army of ants saw the treasure of [Z], carried [Z] out to a clearing in the forest, and lay them down to desiccate and dry.
[Z] lay there amidst the grasses and wildflowers and contemplated the changes they had experienced. They felt no closer to understanding who they were or where was supposed to be home, since they were quite unlike any of the beings and places they had encountered thus far. After a while, [Z] came to miss the wet of the ocean, so the swifts shaped the clouds to look like wet ridges of sand in the sky, but sight isn’t the same as touch. Later, when rain came down from the sky, it was not the same as the gentle lapping of the sea. Nothing was quite the same now that things were one thing or another, instead of straddling a divide.
Eventually a human hand came and picked [Z] up. They turned [Z] over and over in their fingers, smiling at the unexpected and unusual find. [Z] was taken home and placed on a windowsill and lived an eternity of warmth behind a windowpane. When that hand-holder died, [Z] was passed through generations of human families first as an unusual object someone else had loved, and then like a treasured heirloom. Still, [Z] did not know who they were.
One day, [Z] realised that this whole time, throughout this entire, unabashed adventure of life, [Z] had always been breathing. So [Z] thought that maybe, maybe that was a kind of home in and of itself. That maybe breath was company and kin amidst the foreign lands and peoples [Z] had always lived. This felt right to [Z], so they breathed as an offering to the world, but sadly no one noticed. [Z]’s breath was so small and the world so vast that [Z]’s steady exchange went unseen. Until one day, long after [Z]’s death, someone finally observed the bubbles of existence [Z] had once breathed out. And this person, this lucky one, they sat upon a bubble and were raised up.
Maybe [Z] felt it.
In/out is experience.
How long does breath last?