Maui
by Tara Isabel Zambrano
When you position your binoculars, feel your toes digging into the sand at the Waikiki beach in Maui. When you spot silhouettes in distance, a mother whale and her baby. When you turn and catch sight of a man on a raft. When you wave. When you go back to the whales and return to the man on the raft, but he isn’t there. When you frantically adjust the focus distance and all you see a blur of ocean. When you consider telling the hotel security about the man’s disappearance. When your vision has a small blur in the center. When you play the events in your head again and are no longer sure what you saw. When you take the elevator, miss your floor. When you keep alternating between Fuck,and I’m sorry. When the blur seeps into your sleep, and you wake up in the slow torture of the night and look outside your window: the silver-glinted waves as they wash and claim all they can, the TV still flashing on mute. When you stare at the light shifting, darkening under the door of your room. When you check the local newspaper the next day at the breakfast table. When you go back to the beach, sweep the space from frolicking whales to the bodiless ocean emptying into the sky. When you notice the blur merging with other blurs, spreading like a disease. When you keep mouthing, Fuck. When your eyes feel heavy, your face lit purple in the fading light. When you constantly dream about the man, his overturned raft, his flailing arms in water, his receding voice sucked into the blur. When your nightmares spill and sweat soaks your shirt, you wake sour to his cries. When you feel thirsty and drink the entire 24-oz water bottle in a long sip. When you are unable to burp, the blur extending from your throat to where the water sits inside you, the gaps in your body you never knew existed. When you smile at your reflection wearily. When you google tragedies caused by tsunamis and hurricanes, you see the buildings submerged in water, the swollen, blue bodies washing up to the shore, faces down, seaweeds tangled in hair. When you realize there’s something inexplicably haunting about death by drowning. When the blur has extended everywhere you look. When you watch porn and feel you don’t have then energy to stroke your cock. When you find out via WhatsApp that a Bollywood actress was found dead in her half-filled bathtub. When you conclude no amount of water is safe. When the blur is a large whirlpool, drawing your thoughts. When you wonder if the man on the raft wasn’t real. When you wiggle your toes, feel the ground. When you see an email from a resort in Maui, offering a three-day package with submarine tours and whale watching. When the blur is a combination of the images of whales clicking, whistling, the ocean seizing and flinging the light back in flaming wet pools like souls of the drowned from hundreds of miles away. When you admit all that calling makes you feel less anxious. When the blur settles high above you like grey wool of sky. When you return to the beach, rent a raft, row it further into the ocean, your face spotted by salt, your throat going dry. When you feel no amount of water will be enough. When the blur scrapes the approaching darkness swirling the water black. When you realize how little you know about yourself. When you glance at the shore and wave. When the smudge of people at the beach look like they are all watching, they are all waving back.
Tara Isabel Zambrano is the author of Death, Desire And Other Destinations, a full-length flash collection by OKAY Donkey Press. Her work has won the first prize in The Southampton Review Short Short Fiction Contest 2019, a second prize in Bath Flash Award 2020, been a Finalist in Bat City Review 2018 Short Prose Contest and Mid-American Review Fineline 2018 Contest. Her flash fiction has been published in The Best Small Fictions 2019, The Best Micro Fiction 2019, 2020 Anthology. She lives in Texas and is the Fiction Editor for Waxwing Literary Journal.
