///The Ocean Surface.
Cut to the women at the end of the world, on surfboards called big wave guns, swimming over a black new moon reflected on the ocean in the dangerous absence of light. They are here to succumb to depth. Ascension abandoned in the wrecked buildings collapsed on unkind shorelines behind them. Half submerged coastal cities determined uninhabitable, now home to the wild subjects of the ocean’s temperament: women who surf tidal waves.
The ocean has risen to swallow the world.
///What color is this?
As young as twenty years ago we tried to change; in the abandoned buildings of previous coastal residents. Toppled hotels and snapped skyscrapers eroded by tides pulled like taffy by the moon. The moon pulled and the waves pushed. Stagnant waters have formed between rocks and plastics. Tide and pool. Plastics, suds, and slimy mesh rope. Cornucopias of discarded fishing gear still hooked in the bodies of the dead and dying.
We, the women, live in these half submerged buildings bent at 45° angles. We swim from the buildings into deep ocean waters on our big wave guns to watch for waves. We watch nuclear gold sunsets and at night the moon tells secrets.
The sky is called “new clear”. This now means “opaque”.
///Hunger.
Perfect and hungry. Before the fall. Beautiful with red lipstick and tendered flesh pressed on by creams and blushes. The dress was [constraint].
The dress held me freely before I was we. Swayed, lifted when I raised my hands, palms open, cresting, I was licking my lips. I reapplied red lipstick. I kissed. Red wetness transferred from maw to maw. We looked as though we had devoured each other.
All I ate was lipstick. The constraint was the hunger.
Now when we are hungry we consult the waves. She knows hunger more than any animal.
///Algae could be eaten.
Not the sludge algae that was vomited by tides as they pushed brown film and red slime into stagnant pockets of water, into corners of semi-submerged office spaces. Not the creeping algae that crawled up the slanted floors and pooled in mouths of plastic bottle openings.
The green algae with leaves soft as lips that clung to rocks and the sides of submerged buildings. Green algae we could sink our fingers into, finger the lush, anchor ourselves as we eat from walls. We cut a swath of it. Transplant it. Harvest it to be sundried.
Fish pass through the semi-submerged city and eat the algae. Schools denser than the ocean. We reach down with one hand and pull a body, from water to air, into the building, where it is swiftly decapitated and split before the cruelty or panic sets in. Sometimes the fish jump from the schools into the building on their own. Sometimes the birds of prey drop their kill into our laps while we sit cross legged on rooftop gardens and sunbathe.
We were being forgiven.
///Sea/thing.
A whale swam up 4th street carrying a net around her body like a dress. She swam to the roof where we watched for tsunamis. She turned and showed herself to us, the net spinning and trapping her movement. We jumped from the building and descended on her with knives.
We straddled our big wave guns and came to her. Her flesh had broken and healed and fused around the plastic net. The body healing around the foreign object. The body healing around invasion. The body wants to heal.
We cut the net from her flesh. We pulled the plastic from where her flesh had fused over the foreign object. She revealed her eye to us and the water turned red with her blood. Her eye was not panicked. Her eye was not sad. Her eye was the soul in yonic folds witnessing us.
When we finished she floated on her back with us and we all trembled, scared of the selves we once were.
///The Waves Are Different.
We see it in the waters we surf back to our buildings after we swim out to sea. With passion that makes us vomit, the ocean swills acrid scented filth. We accept what we once rejected and responsibly remove our waste from her body. There is so much we do not know what to do.
We push it to shore. We hide it away from her. We take it to land. One of us hides in a grotto formed in the pocket between an old hair salon and its ceiling, and dies swallowing plastic bags. We stand on the roofs of the half submerged buildings of our forgotten coastal city, and when the moon is full we wave discarded branch-like objects. Pipes, and brooms, and fishing rods.
We clap hands and dance. We bang the remains of pots and pans. We wave driftwood and the branches of drowned trees at the moon. We tell her, the moon, “The ocean is having an abortion” and we celebrate as she guts herself of what she never wanted.
She gives us our plastic back and the begging waves that beckon us begin to clear.
///Seething.
Three helicopters came with a net stretched between them. The net cradled plastic. We stood naked on our roofs, we straddled our surfboards and turned our gaze sunward. Our cheeks burned and we shielded our eyes with the salute of our palms.
The helicopters dropped their plastic on our waves.
We had not seen a man for a long time. We recognized them as they shared binoculars, gazing at us from the side of their helicopters. They took turns ejaculating into the ocean before flying away.
Socorro de Luca is a queer, femme writer living in the Pacific Northwest. She was awarded an MFA with a focus on Hybrid literature from Goddard College. Her work has appeared in A Velvet Giant, Harpy Hybrid Review, and she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. You can find her at @itsmesocorro on Instagram.