The Story Begins

The Story Begins

The sun rises
reflecting in confused
criss-crossing beams
off what little glass remains
in the windows of the city
lighting shady canyons
between silent skyscrapers

Below, motion!
A figure (human?) breaks the surface
Water sparkles in the dawn
It gags, retching seawater
or something like it
Burning lungs take a violent, gasping breath
their first in a hundred years
Sweet air!

The pale creature (human?)
clings, spent, to a makeshift dock
slowly remembering air and light
It does not see
— not yet —
the brooding hulks of the Titans
broken, dead, empty (haunted?)
It does not know
that beneath its feet
lie Cadillacs and Cavaliers, rusting
and a Yellow Cab is home
for a school of silvery fish

By the dock there is a boat
small, sturdy (aluminum?)
oars neatly shipped
a rope coiled at the bow
fishing pole and tackle, undisturbed
the newcomer finds this strange.

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1 thought on “The Story Begins

  1. This actually started in my head as a cool setup for a story, so I decided to jot it down. As I thought about it more, the series of images sort of fit themselves into this format. With caveats, I’m pretty pleased with the result.

    This is modified a bit from the original post; my blogging software is in beta and has a rather inconvenient “lose all your work when you click a perfectly natural button to click” feature. My first attempt to reconstruct this thing left out a couple of important bits.

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