Black-and-White Dusk at Limantour Beach

23 With no color but the hue of fog—the husk of air clustered in its dewy shroud. To the edges of the loyal horizon, all was gray and white. Along the coast I walked, crying. Nothing could have been brighter beneath life’s glaring veil. With no place breaking open to reveal the sun’s wound. Another grave of light. This evening I have no shadow’s flight, nothing dark enough to trail or follow. Minute by minute nothing changes. The light only darkening from the lamp on the other side of absence. Looking over to the abyss I perceive a city of women lifting their sleek pelts up through the Pacific sea. Their black gaze at me. Their ingots of eyes, boundless and brooding in wet darkness and salt. Down we go along the spine of shore. Near the edge, the crash of dusk overwhelms the spirit. Their eyes empty me—a gelatinous shell gulling the echoes of my ghosts. So translucent the wave that lifts Rachel Eliza Griffiths Black-and-White Dusk at Limantour Beach 24 Ecotone: reimagining place their ghostly bodies to the top of the curve and in a pearled film of water, their silken tails curve their heavy bodies into mermaids. Minute by minute the seals cluster, black pearls, droplets bobbing up through the water like blood from the depth of its slight wound. Following the body the way blood follows its wounds. No place breaking open to brighten the darkest look of animals. ...