Her Laps Around the Sun End Here

Yes, eaten. By the sea. I know you heard me, and you think that you don’t understand–but you do. Imagine the ocean as it swells into a huge mouth, dripping teeth, and a tongue that laps her in. It’s quiet. You don’t expect it to be. Before you can comprehend what is happening, she is gone. The water lies dormant. You half expect her to resurface, like a duck who has dived a little too deep for a fish. But she doesn’t.

I suppose it is quite sad. Then again, it is a part of life, it can’t be too upsetting. Death, eating, being eaten; it is all part of our journey. And similar to the existence of this Earth, I don’t believe these mere laps around the sun—in between being swallowed by the sea today or 30 years later—would make much difference.

That was the dream, I think. Or something like that. Someone was talking to me, telling me about a girl who went swimming one morning and never returned. There’s been no evidence of the body, and no one can imagine what happened to her. For all I know, the sea could have actually swallowed her whole.

Even though it was a dream, it feels terribly real. As if someone told me these things in reality, and I’m now pretending it was a dream. The thing about the laps around the sun eats me up from the inside. I think about it a lot. I know it’s nihilistic, but I can’t help it. What does it matter? The dream is right. Soon no one will remember a girl went missing, just like I don’t remember anyone going missing. But I’m sure there’s been hundreds here on this beach.

Today is simply another step in my life’s laps around the sun. How awful that I don’t know how I could spend it. Nothing seems to pique my interest the way it does for others. I don’t find physical exercise in any way enjoyable, and I lose my concentration easily if I try to read. So, I suppose sitting here and allowing my lack of concentration free reign is what I enjoy. Watching the waves for so long, they become ingrained in my mind’s eye. When I close my eyes at night, I feel like a kid. All I can see is faint, colourful ripples of the day’s water. It lulls me, yet the idea I spend almost all of the day watching and re-watching the water turn and crash haunts me.

I wonder what it would be like to get eaten by the sea. It would probably be unexpected. But if you’re paying enough attention to the water, nothing is ever unexpected. Things happen for a reason. It depends whether you’re looking for the signs. And it is really intuitive, so not everyone can see the signs. Maybe the girl was blind to the signs, or thought upon herself to see no immediate danger, despite the welling of an orifice behind her. If she had known, seen or felt whatever sign there was, would she have survived? How many more laps around the sun would that have earned her? It could be 40 or 50. Maybe something else would have come and swallowed her in only a couple of laps time… How am I to know?