One of his anxiety dreams is that the sea disappears. He goes to the beach as usual, strips down and walks out. But he just keeps walking, away from what used to be the shore, looking for the tide-line. He walks until he can’t see the city anymore. It’s just a damp, compacted desert in every direction.

Some mornings he doesn’t quite wake up until he’s there in it, and the water clamps around him, and the ache, the shocking pain of cold, is so thorough he can feel it in his eyeballs.

Then, when he’s released from it, he can start his day. Numb but alive.

~

image: Angelica East

text: Kate Whitfield

Sunshower

It’s all hidden behind the clouds except for that one little feeler poking through, contaminating the gloom.

I remember when this happened before. I was much younger, and I thought it was beautiful.

Now I know it is wrong. The weather can be wrong, like a body can be. Nature has flat notes, raw edges, and scars. It can infect itself.

And then it bounces off a window on the hillside, a yellow eye glaring from the wrong side of the world, seeing where it shouldn’t see or be seen. It has snuck under the brim of the cloud to the west, and found a way to multiply.

And not just once, but many times over; a billion tiny suns carried in the water, falling to the earth.

~

image: Angelica East

text: Kate Whitfield