Written in 10 minutes by a teacher in an NWP writing group in May 2016 - using her own ideas, some of the prompts suggested by others, and seeing what emerged from free-writing. This is writing as the beginning of thinking, the playing with ideas and contradictions, the holding of possibilities ...
The sound of the sea in the darkness - the shine of it - the tumble and seethe of it. The foam across the deck and the boat rising. Something big, something dark, something moving beneath the waters, deep and dangerous as stone - the marble waves pounding the deck like a fist in the night - an ebony battery of saltwater - the boat as fragile as a shell, a miracle in the trough of the wave, vulnerable, hard to find, climbing up to the crest while under it the bulk of the ocean heaves and swells, tumescent, full of some awful, deadly birth. 'Breaching' they call it - the whale rising. A breach birth: an agony of tearing - black blood, black teeth, biting black flesh. Here is the end - a submarine, a bullet, a torpedo, a slug of marble, full of gravity - a plumb weight, taking you down, down, down.
The sound of the sea in the darkness - the shine of it - the tumble and seethe of it. The foam across the deck and the boat rising. Something big, something dark, something moving beneath the waters, deep and dangerous as stone - the marble waves pounding the deck like a fist in the night - an ebony battery of saltwater - the boat as fragile as a shell, a miracle in the trough of the wave, vulnerable, hard to find, climbing up to the crest while under it the bulk of the ocean heaves and swells, tumescent, full of some awful, deadly birth. 'Breaching' they call it - the whale rising. A breach birth: an agony of tearing - black blood, black teeth, biting black flesh. Here is the end - a submarine, a bullet, a torpedo, a slug of marble, full of gravity - a plumb weight, taking you down, down, down.