You are a green glass balloon, a lone bubble in a ball of sealed breath. You are a surface of hills and valleys, a cooled liquid. A frosted face and even skin.

You are old.

You were at sea, bobbing in the water under rain and stormy skies with a line to separate tempests and fish. You are a sailor's safety. You are thick. You are stained and dirty and dense. You own the shadows of the night sky.


Once, you belonged to a gray bearded man sitting on a steel stool, wrapping you around an iron pole and offering you his last breath. You took his air inside you and he gave you shape and meaning and life before he threw you into the ocean. You floated. Bobbed up and down, and your moment was the storm. The storm that let you ride on waves, swinging you into the sky. And you liked to circle in the salt water, make friends with kelp and gasp for air. And you liked to trick sailors into wanting crab and they would reach in and grab you and you would laugh, spin in their hands and dive back down until the pressure of water shot you up. You landed on the beach. And the rain cleaned you, and you sat. You sat and waited and sat and waited for something. The old man's breath inside you.