Loss

It's not an easy thing diving for dead bodies. Not when it's a little girl that you find near the east side of the shipyard, and you find her down there in the gunk at the bottom of the oily water amid the floating feces, and the used needles, and the used rubbers, wearing a pink dress. Mush, everything but the open eyes.

Mush.

You could take a sledgehammer to the open eyes; they wouldn't blink.

Hard as stone.

I'm sure you understand.

It's not something you aspire to.

Sometimes deep under water with your torch, and snorkel, and fins, and Coast Guard emblem you feel like the main cog that turns all the little cogs that turn the big turbine that turns the huge wheel.

Then suddenly you are holding/not holding something little, something mushy in a pink dress, blond hair like sea-grass wavering in the current and the eyes always open and always open.

So godamn open.

Maybe it's something that happens in your life when other things fail. Maybe it's just something that happens when you get a deep-sea diving license and little girls in pink dresses become repulsive.

The dance ends as the music plays on and you can't say why.

And you can't say why you almost hate the little useless girl you carry topsides where her parents wait, watching with their eyes closed.

222 words