Magpie #159: The Photograph

"I would like to go to the sea," she said.
It wasn't good enough.
"I would like to go the sea!" she cried
"I would like to see the water glistening," she contemplated, "the way it shows in this picture in that square."
"I would like to touch its jelly surface!" she proclaimed.
It looked so firm beneath the painted sky.
"I would like to see the way the wave crest forms up like a ridge," she continued, "in person!"
"I would like to discover what that white part at the front is, exactly," she concluded.
It seemed the gray sand would not be of much use to her.
"I would like to go the sea..."
She sang until they let her go
They let her go and left her there
She discovered it was moving
and the white part disappeared before she could understand it.
As persons frolicked in the dreamy distance,
the water glistened in many places,
surely all places except for the block shown in the photograph.
The sky looked all but painted and
when she reached for the sea, it smacked her quickly
and disappeared.
She reached out farther,
in a walk,
and was shocked to find a jelly surface wasn't there,
replaced with cooling liquid, changing,
a water that all but sat still, and everywhere.
Looking back at the white part where it smacked her first
where she saw wonderfully white sand,
that surely had been gray before,
she never noticed her photograph lifting out of her own mind
desperately searching for some truth in itself.
It was frightening
to discover nothing was right, personally
and to be all alone in the great jelly
was all but a great adventure.
It scared her.
She was frightened.
She didn't know what to say
And she didn't know she could sink.