Shoreline

Art by Jen

 Shoreline.

A fractal meeting place.

Infinite collisions on the coast.

Water meeting rocks making sand.

Algae floating and sinking and, maybe, in a million, transforming.

I watched a beached boat rock back and forth as the water massaged it. I felt like an interloper - someone in the sitting room of a hospice facility. This boat had been born, lived its life, and now Sat here rotting. I had never experienced it in its halcyon days. I had never even seen it float. I knew it only as the boat on the beach. The rotting boat on the beach. It would eventually rot completely or be taken away to whatever dump they put boats in.

I suppose it had met me in a similar state. While the waves weren’t pushing me around and the critters and creatures weren’t eating away at my insides, I was rotting too; my best days were well behind me.

My life had been spent racing - perhaps the boat and I had that in common? Maybe it had been used to race across the waves? Local regattas? Maybe something more serious? I hope it won.

I’d spent my life racing the car in front of me. Racing to work. Racing home. Cursing the car in front of me for only doing five over the speed limit. Racing from project to project and job to job. Racing straight to my demise.

Now we were both on this beach, rotting. Maybe I’d die here and they’d never find me. I’d become a part of this beach - part of this meeting place - intermingling with the boat and the critters and the water. One day it'd just be my bones and the boat’s bones laying on the sand, watching the horizon, reminiscing.

It was more likely I’d die somewhere else, however, and they’d race me off to wherever it was they decided best. I’d be taken away to whatever dump they put humans in.