It's Still Life

The Tidal Deconstruction of a Beach

I. (The Taking Tide)
The first pull doesn’t cleanse — it draws out the salts of pretending, the bitter, crusted lines worn too long like old salt on skin.

It siphons from your marshes without asking, leaves you stinging and unarmoured, wondering what else you’ve been built from. And in its wake, you feel it: not new, not pure, but branded by the absence of everything you thought you had to carry.

II. (The Returning Tide)
What comes back is not what was taken, but what was waiting: a name that once made the air taste metallic, the rhythm of a feral melody you hummed when no one listened, the skip-stone that never splashed; the tide bearing the first, unspoken name you ever had for God — not as relic, but twitching, alive, breathing and wet in your hands again.

III. (The Remembering Tide)
The sea hums its engine-song and reminds you: you were never meant to be still … you are edge, not sea, not land, but the shifting conversation between them, the yes, the no, the porous ache between… you are the beach.

Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Stories including the word “brand”.

This piece is inspired by a recent near-hurricane-force storm that drew sand underwater from miles off shore on to the pebble beaches along the coast of Sussex. As the waves curled and retreated, the pebbles were pulled back into the sea. We now have sandy beaches below Beachy Head(link goes to BBC)   Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI. ©Misky 2006-2026.