A femur sits just beyond the reach of the tide. The remaining light paints it in a cool white. There is no decaying meat on it. There is no trace of the body it called home. No ligaments. No blood. Not even a slight yellow tinge. Where is the rest of you, my dear? Where is the leg of you? The calf? The toes and blood vessels and muscles? Where is your skin? A very small crab crawls out from beneath and it stands about the bulbous end of you, catching the tiny wind, lightly covered in tan grains of sand. You are a mountain there in the sand for this creature. What do you hide below the cover of earth?
Waves crash and diminish and their very edges caress your singular form, oh bone. In comes the clean cold water of the sea. Out it goes again, leaving, in its wake, a whirlwind of foam and colored rocks, and its deep voice rumbles. The air is shaking. From beyond the wall of the ocean, a fish catches a glimpse of your glistening surface, and it wonders. It has swum away now. Soon there will be another. Are you out there, too, as you are here?
There is a road a few hundred feet away and the lights of passing cars are beginning to flicker on. Bushes and tall grass suddenly come bright and dissipate with the sound of engines. On the road, a pair of eyes close in the back seat of an old Buick. Lightning strikes in the horizon. The echo of this thunder is familiar. Do landscapes echo differently to thunder? Now the waves take over again, and the sea speaks.
The steps of a man approach. His head is down and he wears a heavy coat, hiding hands in pockets. Faraway winds come in, sharply, and in the air ocean dew swirls and coats the fibers of the man’s clothing. He winces and turns away, but doesn’t stop, and the tide is going, revealing the hidden texture below. A large stone catches the man’s right foot, and he stumbles. Would you stumble, too? Now he stares, oh dear, at what? His gaze is fixed upon a dark form, and yet he walks. His head turns as he nears it, and yet he walks. The dark form is unmoving. Is it landscape? Is it the object from which thunder echoes?
The moment passes. The dark form remains. The man continues towards you. Now, the heavy rain near the horizon has eclipsed any remaining sunlight, and a tepid darkness has fallen upon this beach. Waves come and go, still, lower into the world. Another lightning strike. Another car speeds by. Another echoing thunder. Now, the man hurries. There comes one step, and there comes another. The man comes, indeed.
A gull flies above, and cries, but none other follow it. There comes another step. The small crab has gone into hiding. It’s nowhere to be seen. Did it run away into the lowering tide? And there comes another. The man is whispering, reciting a monotone prayer, head down and hands in pockets. The gull, now, has gone, too. The man’s shoes squeak as seawater soaks and expresses from the fabrics and leathers. From the edge of water, now receding, the femur is far and seems untouched. In the sand, and as a wave fades into it, tiny holes appear and exhale a bubble or two.
There is one more step, and the man looms. His foot comes down and pushes on the round side of you, deeper into the sand. You, femur, are displaced and your other side rises from below and catches on the man’s right leg. Here comes another step, and then another. The man pats at his pants, and walks on, whispering still. Now, the man walks away and there is no more movement. Another thunder echoes. Another lightning strike. Rain begins to pour. The scars on the sand around you heal, and darkness becomes absolute. There is no moon tonight. Oh, femur. Now you sit in place, again. No one else approaches.
Raindrops soon fall upon everything near and far, and their sound on the sand and the road and the sea echo in this landscape. There is no more lightning and thunder. Now, rainfall takes over and waves grow distant.
A femur sits by the sea, under rain.