Deathwish 035: Imee
“I should be cast out to sea”
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I am watching you from the rafters. I smelt your cologne halfway around the block, mixed with your sweat. You’ve propped your skateboard against the wall quietly, so as not to wake the dead.
I know what you’re thinking. Why the fuck is the ceremony here? I should be cast out to sea, my body gorged on by sharks, the scraps fought over by the gulls at dusk. Bones encrusted with salt, crystallised on the ocean floor.
My father nods to you. You notice how much older he looks since that night we told him we were getting married. You’ll never forget his face. You, squeezing my cunt under the table.
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The crowd moves aside for you and your bare feet. Everyone knows who you are.
You have thrice the amount of freckles across your nose since we met four summers ago. I used to lick them, hoping to catch them, like a disease. You’ve come 10,000 miles to see my face, once again. But the body before you does not embrace you. It does not smile, that smile that set your heart aflame. It does not even cuss you, for finding someone else long after you left.
You are placing a feather in my hair, the red tailed cockatoo feather. Our wedding ring. You have brought me yours. I am torched. Your fingers trace my eyelids, my lips.
Your eyes are a radiant green. They are looking straight through me. 100 nights I gazed back into them, my whole universe contained within. Those eyes that unlocked my soul.
All the words I composed to you, with the sea my only audience.
Carried to the death.
My heart a bible of Psalms, odes only to you. Encrusted with salt, deep in the wound. The gulls feast on its crystallised scraps.
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To read the previous installment, "Deathwish 034: Marybeth," go here. To participate in Deathwish, find details here.
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Imee was born in Adelaide, Australia and currently lives in Adelaide, Australia.