Clear Blue
by Elamimax
Break
Break, O waves, at the shore
White foamed and crowned
Till our ears fear no more
That abyssal sound
Break, O waves, O hungering claws
Your jaws give us pause to remember our love
And our hearts never feared what our ears didn’t hear
Your abyssal song of the waves high above
Break, O waves, ‘till a new day dawns
Which your rhythms and songs ever fill
And each dawning day to new shores we steer
Break now, O waves
Bring us home
To you still
LATE
I’M LATE
Rolling out of bed and landing on all fours, I almost barely managed to avoid putting my head through the door of my flimsy closet, and took off running. The advantage of the way I’d been living my life meant I didn’t have to get dressed. At least I managed to grab the deodorant off of my bedside table as I made my way to the door. Only inadvisable practice had taught me how to put my shoes on while running.
Ignoring the barely-functional elevator, I ‘used the stairs,’ though it was probably more accurate to say that I used the landings and largely ignored the stairs, holding on to the railings for dear life. Less than a minute had passed between the realization I’d overslept and my exit out the front door. I ran down the street in a full sprint.
The first coffee shop had to be ignored. The quality was higher, but it took longer. I couldn’t afford the waste of time.
Pavement swept under my feet like tracks under a train, my breathing ragged. World’s dumbest superpower. I had no stamina to speak of and I was out of shape – college hadn’t left me with a lot of time, energy or flat out desire to work out – and yet all the same I could run hard and fast for quite some time just by not thinking of it as my body. It was a tool. Sure, a hammer used too hard might break, but the carpenter didn’t feel its pain.
Just pain, I reminded myself as a bubble of something awful rose up in my chest. I pushed that aside too. I’d spent too many days in the last week crying in the morning for reasons I couldn’t pin down. I was so close to graduating and working a part-time job for someone I had looked up to since I was still in high school. Hiding in a closet for a fifteen-second crying session made no sense.
The second coffee shop was to be ignored too. It was fast, but it wasn’t very good, and if I came in late with bad coffee, I would be ruined. I slowed down just enough to rummage in my pocket for the change I’d kept from yesterday. There was an unhoused woman sitting by the corner, and giving her what I had to spare was a small ritual. She shouted something as I flew past. I didn’t hear her. The blood roaring through my veins, my heart trying to keep up with the demands I was placing on it, deafened me.
Usually I listened to music in the mornings, on a pair of old earbuds that needed an adapter to function with my phone, but I couldn’t afford the wireless ones, let alone a different phone. Today, it was just the sound of my own breathing, like a wounded animal, and the thumping of my heartbeat. There was a stabbing feeling in my side. I had to focus on tuning it out.
The third coffee shop was a little out of the way but it was fast and it was high quality. I just had to put in a bit more extra effort, run a bit harder. Thankfully, they took orders digitally so you just had to go in and pick up your order. Making the order while sprinting full tilt was hard, but I was used to it. It was going to be the last thing I did on my phone today, I noticed to my frustration. The old charger I’d been using didn’t always connect very well, and it hadn’t actually powered up my phone at night. I was going to be using the last two percent of battery life on ordering coffee.
And this place was slightly more expensive than the usual, which meant that a good fifteen dollars of the order would come out of my own pocket. Fine. It was my own fault for sleeping in. The order was made.
I was at the coffee shop two minutes later, a minute later than I anticipated because I’d turned a corner and had narrowly avoided crashing into a mother walking her kid. Technically she could’ve stepped out of the way, but women had been forced to get out of the way of guys like me for ages. I wasn’t going to contribute to that. So I’d thrown myself off to the side (and into the building), and arrived at the coffee place with a shoulder that clicked ever so slightly when I raised my arm. It’d heal on its own, right?
Coffees in hand and a bag with a cream donut between my teeth, I resumed my run, more measured and careful this time. I couldn’t spill the coffee. Congresswoman Carlysle’s taste in coffee was almost as exact as her demand for neatness.
The campaign office was already buzzing. The Congresswoman had to give a speech today. She was running on a platform of equality and going to a museum to promote Diverse Artists was going to be the highlight of the schedule of the day. She’d have my head if she had to do it without her liquid stimulants. Not to mention that, if she told me to fuck off, that would be my job and my internship, perfectly interlinked, out the window, and my education with it. I couldn’t afford to keep slacking like this.
I ran to the side entrance – no way was I showing my unkempt face near the front door at a time like this – and hurried inside. Someone hissed something at me in that way people do when they’re yelling but keeping their voice down. I gave an apologetic smile and slithered past.
The Congresswoman was in her office, surrounded by people helping her go over her speech and the day’s plans. Honestly, it’s the kind of thing I was good at, but I hoped that doing more menial work now to prove that I was dedicated meant that I was going to be given more serious responsibilities later.
Pushing the glass door open with my shoulder, I was once again reminded of my stumble on the way there, and suppressed the pained wince, doubly so when my twitch caused scalding liquid to spill on the back of my hand. “Your coffee?” I whispered.
“The lefties will want you to make a show of working with black women,” the campaign manager said. “We’ve moved a couple of them closer to the entrance for when you do the photo op.”
“Good. Oh, thanks, kiddo,” Congresswoman Carlysle said, raising her cup of coffee to me. “I already got some, though. Good on you for being proactive, though. Close the door behind you on your way out.” She gave me a performatively encouraging smile, then turned back to her people. “Do you think you could get someone disabled in there too? Something obvious.” She snapped her finger. “The curator! She’s in a wheelchair! Isn’t she Puerto Rican?”
“Brazilian.”
“Whatever,” the Congresswoman said. “Yeah, get her closer to the front.” I closed the door behind me, holding two cups of coffee as behind me, strategy was being discussed. I caught my breath, which was a mistake.
Catching my breath was the kind of thing I only ever did by accident. It was a way to let your mistakes, pain, responsibilities and exhaustion all catch up to you. Of course, they did. My chest hurt with every breath. My shoulder throbbed. The back of my hand probably needed cold water. I was holding two cups of coffee that, combined, cost more than I made in a day. On the other side of the glass door behind me, the aspirations I’d had for making the world a better place were being ground into marketable paste.
I had been wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, once, convinced that hard work and dedication and a lot of campaigning and canvassing meant that you could elect the right people to do the right thing. The world was run by old, privileged, rich, white men, but it wouldn’t always be. Women’s rights, queer rights, had come a long way, and I would help get them even further.
There was naive hubris, there was Icarus, and then there was me. It had taken me years of having my nose pressed to the problem to realize that the people who proclaimed themselves the champions of change were the ones with the biggest incentive to keep things the same. When you pay someone to put out fires, they’re motivated to burn your house down. They get paid for trying. I took a sip of the coffee and burned my lips as it spilled on my shirt. There was no change here. Just a broken system and a bunch of people with big hammers. I felt so stupid. Trying to be a part of something greater and then finding out that the ‘greater thing’ was so great it didn’t matter if I was here at all.
At least the museum was nice.
An hour later, the Congresswoman was doing her thing outside, and I had a few minutes to myself, which was the worst kind of gift I could’ve been given. Thankfully, nobody had actually noticed me being late, so the admonishment would come the next time I messed up. “You’ve got fifteen minutes,” the campaign manager had told me and the other interns who were local. “Go look at the exhibit or something. Try to look interested for the press. If anyone asks, it’s important to Congresswoman Carlysle that her campaign people also have access to art from a diverse group of people from different ethnicities and nationalities. Whatever. Go look at paintings. Try not to look like a tired intern.”
I walked between the paintings, barely registering anything. I hated museums. Sure, it was a nice museum, and all the art here had actually been donated instead of stolen (it had been A Whole Thing; optics, you understand), but all of that only got you so far when you were in a building when you were supposed to contemplate.
Contemplating was what got me here. Why was I even here?! I’d had aspirations of fixing the world and now what I wanted more than anything was for some elaborate art-heist to break out around me just in the hopes that a stray bullet during a dramatic firefight would paint a new Pollock on the walls with my internals. Sadly, the real world was lacking in firefights.
Instead, there was just silence. Reminders I had taken a wrong turn, my brakes were cut, the rest of the way was downhill, and there was an ocean full of sharks at the end of that hypothetical driveway. God, I was so weak. Everyone else managed and I was here, working for one of the most progressive lawmakers in the country, getting a free tour of a museum, feeling sorry for myself. I clenched my teeth and resolved to turn this into something actionable. Maybe I could work it into my thesis. The need to overcome the desire to give up. The need for a stronger will, something something crucible, blah blah life lessons. I was starting to formulate a chapter in my head, distracting myself with words that flitted back and forth like bees around a decaying flower, when I came across the painting.
It was simple, almost crude. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. White buildings by a blue ocean and an even bluer sky. For a brief moment, a calm came over me. I felt weightless. The artist had painstakingly recreated the different hues of the water, foam heads. Soft clouds overhead were ever so gently painted by a sun outside of the frame that had just barely started to set.
There was a city by the water, made of white stone, primitive but welcoming, every house a home. There were figures, blotches when looked at from up close, walking down the village streets. Despite using almost exclusively blues and whites, there was a warmth to the work that seeped into my bones. If I concentrated, I could hear the gulls in the distance, by the waterside.
Then the moment passed and I realized that the weightlessness was because my heart had skipped a beat for several seconds. When it resumed my entire body convulsed and I fell to my knees. Only the lack of energy prevented me from throwing up in the middle of the museum.
The second to last thing I could think as I gasped for air was trying to cover up the Congresswoman’s name on my shirt, not wanting to make a bad impression.
The last thing was that I wanted to look at the painting again. I wanted to hear the seagulls. See that white seaside town. See the ocean. Then it all went black.
