seagulls~under~waves

short story included in a recent work 'tumbleweed for her loved ones to mourn' which was installed at SERF, Leeds as part of a group show in August, 2024.

You wake up and reach for the metal bottle at your bedside table. A tissue is stuck to its base, stuck with some kind of fluid seeped from you, you forget. The haze of the night took clarity as its payment. As you reach your lips to the rim, a waft of damp soil flows into your nostrils. This pulls you back from that first sip, your sandy throat croaks in return. You wonder about that smell. Something reminiscent of your teenage retainer, ten years old, locked in a moist plastic coffin. You wretch. Taste buds teeter on edges holding on as saliva builds in sedimentary layers. You fall back to sleep and dream of her. 

Your mouth is an anomaly. You look for it in him, her, them and find no trace. They tell you that yours is hers and that hers stretched its widest when she, in an alleyway, screamed for help from the shadow lurking in the darkness. She was defiant. Her urge to live encased impossibly by her 18 inch waist. When she eventually died, her body was rolled to the coast, picking up seed, twigs and grasses on route. She arrived as a mangled bundle of bone and flesh. Tumbleweed for her loved ones to mourn. During the ceremony, she is wrapped in giant swathes of black seaweed, puckered at the edges, light smoothing through. They have brought her here, where the seagulls live under the waves. A horn rings and they begin to emerge. Their beaks flecked with scales. Breathy holes, fleshy and open on their backs. They hold on to their ability to smell, their eyes always closed. Gently, they scoop their coral wings under the roll of seaweed containing her, that 18 inch waist. As they roll her down the dunes, she picks up sand on route to the lapping waves, the sea lulling her towards its currents.

***more images from the show can be found on my website