SEABORN

JP RELPH

The pub drinkers have bored of the old stories. So, you hunker alone in the corner where shadows are stained with hops and years-gone cigarette smoke. To them- the after-work pub drinkers, the one-with-lunch office crowd - war and death are only ever played out on screen. They think of men in blood-spattered jungles and sun-burned deserts. Not young lads on the water, salt-seared, wrinkled hands rope-ragged. Not the bombs turning waves to iron fists, pummelling sailors to chum.

Lads like Charlie and Skipper; raised on crabbers, salt imbedded in the cracks of their weather-browned faces. Faces that you’ve lost to time and drink. Lads who became brothers, pressed to the bosom of a churning mother. Brothers who were dragged into her cold, grey womb, washed from blood-slip decks as she claimed them.

Eventually she claims all who challenge her. Some are taken too young. Others must wait long, dry years before she calls them. You stare out the pub window that’s framed in oily seascapes, so deceitful in the sweeps of brilliant blue and sun-flash gold. You stare at the sliver of honest iron-grey that truly knows war and death. Truly knows you. Calls to you now. You stroke the faded tattoos on your forearms, your hand rough as sand-scraped deck. The anchor and mermaid, the musket and leaping cod. Paled to old navy like your coat. Like you.

You leave your glass, your smoke-stained corner, and go to her. Your joints creak like old rigging as you navigate pebbles the size of fists, gleaming like polished medals all the way to the sand. Hard weather’s on the way; the sky broods, clouds bashing together like scared lads in bunks. She pulls, your sea mother, pulls you down beer-brown sand to the froth of her cold arms. A lone seagull screams a siren overhead as you wade into her embrace. Through the salt-veil of seawater and years you smell strong tea and boot polish, hear laughter and shaky-sung shanties. It’s been so long, and no time at all.

Two porpoises breach the surface of the water like missiles launched, glistening gunmetal-grey. Their dark-ringed eyes watch as you submerge. Lads who became brothers. Brothers reborn to a life in the endless churn and chop. They’ve waited all your long, dry years. The sea has bite; she tears the old coat from your body, tears your cod-white skin. There’s no pain. You hear the click, click of your bones reforming. The click, click of your brothers as they circle in anticipation. The sea shushes them, shushes you to her breast. Her milk is salty and tinged with old blood. There’s nobody left to tell the old stories, the sea claims them too. You dive, surface, snorting salt-cold, flicking shreds of worn rubber from your tail. You join your brothers, three fins like sails carving the waves until the land is but a blur and the sky and the sea are one.

JP Relph is a working-class Cumbrian writer, mostly hindered by four cats and aided by copious tea. A forensic science degree and passion for microbes, insects and botany often influence her words. Recently found in New Flash Fiction Review, Full House Lit and Quill & Crow. 
@RelphJp
@therelphian.bsky.social