Blue Glass
By Lisa Alexander Baron
Her husband, a marine biologist, was bedridden. His bones had lost their strength, their will to move. He had to give up the ocean. So, she filled their urban loft with remnants of the sea. A large canvas of the ocean defined their bedroom, offering a constant drift of waves across the wall. She wanted him to get lost in the welcome chaos and blue and green and gray tones of the water anytime he wanted or needed. It comforted her to know that when she left the city to teach, he had the motion of water, its drive, its pulse.
She returned home again and again with more blue glass bottles that evoked the sea. Bottles were placed everywhere they could fit inside the bedroom: on the windowsill, on the flat of the desk, on the chairs to the right and left of the bed, and even on the upper shelves of the closet because the door could be opened. On each deck of the tall bookshelves, the blue bottles cast light on the volumes on ocean tides, sailing, seals and whales, erosion, and others about the science of sand and air and water.
A handmade mobile that caught the thought of sunlight on the water gently spun in front of their high-rise window; she added tiny shell by shell to its tail and it began to adopt a more kite-like sway. Blue and gray and white rocks from the Maine coast were arranged like abstract sculptures on the nightstand, all within her husband’s reach. An eight-foot piece of driftwood shaped like a tuning fork brought back the rhythm of waves to match his breath.
The only thing missing was sand. She began to wonder about the composition of the blue bottles. Glass: the child of sand. Sand – heated, melted, cooled, and shaped. She began to dream of blue bottles breaking down into blue sand. Then, the blue of the bottle dissolving into sand and blue water. The truth the ocean carries revealed. In her latest dream, her husband floated on a bed in a room filled with water. The fork of big driftwood, a rudder for the bed, now raft.
Why are we always seeking water? Why does it draw us in trance-like necessity? Her husband was now in the womb of a bed. She was desperate for him to feel the welcome slight chill of ocean water, to hear the chant of unceasing waves, to re-know the surety of its blue solidity, the strength his own bones had lost. When her husband began to cry out in pain, she began to break the blue bottles one by one, to wait for the ocean, for the waves, to arrive.
THE END
Author Bio: Lisa Alexander Baron is the author of four poetry collections, including “While She Poses,” prompted by visual art (Kelsay Books). Her new magical realism flash fiction pieces will appear in *82 Review, Backwards Trajectory, and Your Impossible Voice. She loves her work as a circulation assistant at a public library where she hears about patrons’ strange and beautiful reading habits.