A Knife Dreamlet
by Pat A Physics

Using the tip of a blade, cut a small hole in the sail. Look carefully through the hole at the birds. It is cold, you are shaking, but you can shift around your ballast if you can’t steady your gaze. Funny birds who drink your thoughts with perky zeal. Their heads move to invisible jazz music. It makes you sick and tired of the sea. It’s specific to the tiny bird head movements. Anger makes you jump out at them. When they fly into the sky, you moan. No one can hear you, and everything is creaking, slapping, and forming waves. Your wave is lost in it all. Becoming smaller and smaller like a balloon that an infant has let go into a cloudless sky. You are now on the other side of the sail and the hole before you has a little flap that angles to the left where you moved your blade. There is a triangular shadow that forms and you can see the threads of the cloth. Your limbs are heavy and numb, and your head aches. You look out at the people you love. They are all unconscious. Some of them look peaceful as they rest, puffing up their lips over and over. You puff out your lips and think about your last kiss. It was after wine and you had been dancing. Now your lips are chapped and are raw from the wind. But you try to go back to the candle light, and the music that spun everyone around in circles. The circles that shaped your fleeting moments. This icy circle that has brought pain and crust. You want to jump into the water and feel the currents swallow you whole. The currents are swelling bellies. Filled with infinite sleep and dream, boundless time and space, and probably fish. You close your eyes tightly to the sea and feel the uselessness. The uselessness is climbing up your throat, into your ears, eyes and mouth. You stop.

Pat is a musician living in Austin, TX and is currently a part of Gary Wilson and The Blind Dates. They are currently on tour in Europe.