Where I End

by Sophie White

Their chalky grey surface suggests no rush of life within. If I chipped at one, I imagine the organs would hang inside the hollow, fossilised. Even the children of the island are calcified. Their cries and laughter die in their throats.

The sea is dead, gilded with the dead light of dead stars and, because it sways and sings and chants, it feels alive, although it’s not. It is teeming with death and it is very, very beautiful.

It reminds me of the time I placed a spider in my mouth. I was much younger. I had seen a spider come out of my mother’s mouth. I didn’t know it wasn’t normal.

(Hope, I’ve come to learn, can be a noose. When we hope, we willingly, blithely, put our heads in a sadistic coil and wait to be hanged. I hoped for things when I was younger – pathetic things – and was always left swinging.)

This is where it ends. Where I end.