Sails
The sickle sails rose and caught like a bike in the wind. The Easter breeze warmed, and drew the children together, huddling out of the spray, protecting their sick mother from the dampness of the journey.
No amount of sugar for breakfast could absorb the persistent dampness, and the ship rocked consistently. The children begrudgingly walked the deck, grabbing the rails for support, searching for a cloth to dry their mother's forehead. She had never asked, but her unsaid expectations were clear and the children did not want to leave them unmet. They climbed the mast, unfurled the kite.
Soggy weather made for soggy minds, and the lightning struck swiftly, exit holes burned throughout the hull. The children scrambled while their mother screamed of technological drugs for her physical pain, begged them for useful behaviour. The children filled the holes with caulk.
The mother let her mind rest, unaware her children needed higher standards for their work. Supper on the deck in the sunset of the storm, unaware of you in bed, feeding fluffy pudding to their mother. Had the children merged their work with you, it may have turned out differently. As it was, a pinprick for a tree became a torrent for the ship, and the sea walked through as it had seasons before, when it was a spring rain in a freshly tilled field, soft and gentle as a Ric Ocasek solo album.
Crawling in her skin, their mother tried to warn you, to speak of science and salvation, begging for a final visit from friends. But the children remained on deck, talking, eating the sugar meant for the medicine you were never able to administer. Their mother complained briefly of intestinal discomfort, but the sea rose to ease her pain.
The children partook of a final happy breakfast, pizza and coffee. You had a final night of insomnia, unable to let sleep take you before the sea yawned a sleepy death. Before childhood ended, and the responsibilities of the week ahead were more than mere flotsam on the calm waters of morning.