By Beth Hendrickson
The ocean spreads glistening white until it hits a circular limit. The white wave sizzles onto the black heat of its shoreline. It halts because there has only ever been one being of infinity, and this white ocean is not it. A sun rises like a biodome. Like an apricot. Like a golden boil. Around the sun, the wave’s white edges flutter like the loose cheeks of a 100-year-old nursing home resident who is rolled to the dining room, given a cake with a single candle representing a century of flames, and told to blow it out. In the wheelchair, her body fills space to allotted limits. Her edges crisp, blacken, and crinkle in the searing heat of her finite being. Someone has brushed blush circles onto the white oceans of her downy cheeks. In the end, both are alike—the white ocean with a bulging sun now setting, cooking, in its middle, and the woman sitting in the wheelchair. Both will be consumed, when it is time.
Elizabeth has been a riverboat deckhand, violinist, rock climber, and middle school math teacher (in no particular order). She was long-listed for Jericho Writer’s 500 Novel contest and has received National Scholastic Writing Awards. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband, two daughters, and a strong-willed dachshund.