she sells sea shells

shell.

like the shell of an ear, and years ago jim certainly tried to pick out the place below the perilous point where he thought a human's top ridge would fit, and he certainly used to think he knew where he could and did find it, but it's not there anymore, and it never has been.

shell.

like the grooves in a scallop head crusted over with burnt burgundy flickers that come of water and waves, water and waves, salt and ash and water and waves.

shell.

like what spock's head is. and the pearls, the wisdom...not gone, but unformed. malformed. unformed. coalescent.

shell.

and the muscle in a mussel is alive until it's eaten, and jim feels like a muscle except he also feels like he hasn't any muscles at all, he's all gut in the front and ass in the back, and spock is lean willow beauty in boots like a cat like a prowler like a sleepwalker like a carpet crawler like a shell, like a shell, like a shell--

dead and clammed shut. brittle. bony where jim is boneless (bonesless).

we shelled out the whole enterprise for you, our bounty - oh, precious, precious thing, creature of the deep and the unknown but not the unknowable (please, not the unknowable, i love and therefore i cannot stand the unknowable, not now, not like this).

empty like a shell of his former self, of his future self, of his eternal existence and the place where his soul is meant to rest but it won't rest, won't rest...

and a shell always rings with the sound of the sea. spock's ears will always ring with the sound of his mother's laughter, even as it's mingled with the whales' jubilant cries that he heard inside before he heard them out, and would gillian and amanda be friends?

amanda would certainly never call him a ditzy guy. but she might learn to, and then she might never stop.

and the shell always rings. hello? are you there?

and the shell fills up with water, sputters, overflows, out comes the pearl. always more. always clutched tight. rigid and bilgewater-eloquent.

jim in the shell. it's cold, in a warm way. it's tight, in a loose way.

open, spock. if you can?

that's all a shell in the sea is for. to open.

it becomes a seashell, once you get to look inside, and those childrens' playthings of wax and wistfulness are all the wonder in the world.