Summer Break
written by: Stella Jay
The walkers, warmer and sweeter even than seals, sip trendy teas and pose for photos on the sand. Gulls and pigeons scurry in their wake. Her patrol runs parallel to the shore, her belly twelve feet below the boundary between sea and sky. This allows her dorsal fin one full foot of clearance. Stealth.
Pedicured toes scamper in the shallows. Today, she waits. Such paltry temptations are beneath her; they are vulgar luck. She awaits a miracle. She is of a people older than the trees. Sharks like her navigated the sea before the North Star was born, but the years have hardly touched them. They are– she is– perfect: Poseidon’s chosen. His gospel is carved into the cartilage of her skeleton. She can’t speak His Word, but she knows it nonetheless. Her people are prophets. She is a being of unshakable faith, and a miracle is coming.
There was an earthquake on the other side of the ocean. A miracle is coming.
The waves recede from the beach, drawing her closer to home and farther from the bounty on land. She waits; she trusts. The walkers pursue their curiosity into the surf, raising cell phones to record the sudden flight of the sea. They don’t understand. The birds, shrieking, take to the sky in salt-and-pepper clouds of gray and white feathers. They do understand. Their illiterate gods speak into the viscera, too.
And then– O, Poseidon!– she is soaring. The tsunami’s white fingers raise her into the yellow sky, and she sees everything, the arid fragment of creation where sharks cannot swim. She gazes upon glittering golden sand, the ruffling fronds of palm trees, the red and orange cliffs that rise on either side of the beach.
Some of the walkers turn and run. They are beings of unshakable hope. Few of them will see rosy-fingered dawn.
Salt spray tickles her skin. The sun’s warmth caresses her back. The hands of the sea carry her into the candy-luminous splendor of the anthropocene: aloha shirts brighter than the tropics, umbrellas like great sherbet mushrooms, beach balls and frisbees, and dogs with tennis balls in grinning mouths. The dogs do not flee. They are beings of unshakable loyalty.
And the shore’s bounty is delivered unto her. She feasts upon coconut sunscreen and cocoa butter lotion, all of it set off by the sharp tang of hot, mammalian blood. The walkers thrash, shrieking like gulls, high harmonies over the melodious thrum of rushing water and snapping bone.
Soon she will die, her body wedged between the McDonald’s and a totaled Cybertruck, gills burning in the forbidden air, cruel talons of sunlight tearing into her skin, pigeons picking at her wide eyes. But now she is alive, reveling in Dionysian feeding frenzy, her teeth awash in saltwater and rapturous blood. She is having a great summer break.
- Spotlight On Writers – Stella Jay - October 18, 2025
- Summer Break - September 8, 2025
- Hatch - November 2, 2024
