my head is spinning, the world a whirling dervish reeling out of control.
thoughts racing faster than i could ever run then suddenly stop and i forget where i am.
then i regain my bearings, and i remember that all is crumbling to pieces like a sandcastle once made in my youth.
it didn't escape the elements that are now breaking me, burning me, drowning me.
its once whole structure,
my once whole being,
disintegrating into no more than the hundreds of thousands of individual grains from which it began.
my own version of the old saying:
from ashes to ashes,
from flesh to flesh,
from dust to dust,
from grains of sand to grains of sand.
some ten years ago, a wave crashes through the mote and seaside walls surrounding that castle on the beach, and another sandslide begins.
the seemingly molten mixture of powdered rock and water flows smoothly over its mold and through the chubby little fingers of a child crying for the loss of something much greater than those walls she worked
so hard to build and perfect.
but she stops herself, because she's learned that strengthening the wave with her tears will only increase its power to destroy and aid in the flushing away of her creation.
little does she know that ten, twelve, fifteen years down the rocky road, she'll be doing the same thing
except instead of on the beach, curled up crying on the bathroom floor as she watches her tears be flushed away, not with sand this time, but her own bile and today's remains of a woman well fed.
a gust blows in over the water and straight into my quickly deteriorating structure.
fragments from its top turet spiraling, stinging as they hit the eyes of the same little girl.
she's temporarily blinded as her crust filled eyes once again fill with tears.
she's in pain, hurting from the inside out, more than anyone around her could scarcely imagine.
the gale smacks her around, pushing her this way and that, threatening but never merciful enough to sweep her away to a place she feels safe and warm.
only because, she thinks, she's been blessed with a thick, chunky build that will never be small enough, never the mere skin and bones that she knows would allow her to waft away in the wind, weightless and
carefree, try as she might to make it so over the next innumerous years.
so ironic, she thinks. even the elements seem determined to punish her for whatever it was she did so wrong.
the wind, though at first stabbing, begins to feel cool and soothing.
in a way, she's come to accept the pain, to embrace it, to believe it is what she deserves
and find comfort in the redemption in a slap's sting and a bruise's ache.
in her youth and innocence, the blustering sand is easily imbedded into her very skin, her very being, not to be removed or challenged for years to come.
again, little does she know that years of repression and refusal to acknowledge the festering wounds will only deepen then callous them.
layers upon layers upon thickened layers will have to be spliced open and painfully peeled back just to reach each miniscule original grain.
but she doesn't know that, for all that matters now is keeping her castle from falling apart, holding herself together.
it doesn't matter if she's falling apart inside as long as the chastening world sees nothing but a content smile.
years down the road that smile has eroded little by little with every passing day. the castle has long since fallen away and all that remains are these unspoken words she attempts to pour out onto paper.
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