There was once a Starfish that nested on an abandoned beach, snug and comfortable on some huge ancient sea-rock, glittery in places.
Sky the colour of the inside of a volcano about to blow.
The ocean roaring like a thousand firecrackers.
The Starfish wished it was human, and looked up at the sky and thought: “Why can I not have arms and legs and lashes and huge eyes as big as crab apples?”
The Starfish was smart, it knew what it wanted.
Errant fish were happy in the ocean, but the starfish wanted to be human.
The Starfish was bored and impassive. It was beautiful yes, but with no substance, it feared.
The warm sea-scented sand and the ocean as big as any heaven is the home of the lonely starfish. The ancient waters of this earth, its neighbour.
It did not want to be lonely and impassive.
Sleep is where It seeks solace; sleep is its quiet cave; its own private preserve.
It luxuriates in the salty intermittent waves.
It is always waiting. Time is hanging around.
Sand as fine as refined sugar; as fine as talcum powder in parts.
Dense, tenacious stars. Star-crossed heaven. It is looking up in wonder.
The slow, suffocating anaesthetic of the ocean, perpetual.
Towns and cities are webbed in knots of light; they are filled with wires brimming with electricity; made up of plastic and stone and tenacious, stubborn metal; brimming with people, frantic with life.
The Starfish is lonely, with no company at all.
The Starfish reads the ocean and its violence like poetry.
It has never swam to the bowels of the ocean.
So much not yet done.
It is one with nature.

Some person from the ocean is appearing forth, some stick-woman; nameless and happy, with fiery curls of hair.
She looks strange, not human at all; or at least normal.
She looks like some cartoon, off of the page.
The Starfish, sleepy and maudlin, startled.
This woman promises so much!
But alas the Starfish is disappointed, the woman was not sent to answer his prayers; not some angel as he had hoped.

_____________________

A mosaic of coral, mingling with so much salt.
The Starfish has been left unhappy, left to mingle with them tons and tons of sand, and tons and tons of ocean, and tons and tons of sand; laced with tons and tons of rock.
Left all alone his wish unfulfilled. Left all alone on this huge abandoned beach, not saved, and not rescued, nothing.
The ocean is embedded with tiny fish that are embedded with tiny bones.
Life on this beach is solitary.
The Starfish is thinking: Lifetimes ago I had been happy. I had revelled in my intricate facade.
Nothing is now left of them happy days. People have not appeared for years and years and years.

The Starfish is content once more.
Stars with uneven light, shining bright.
Tons and tons of sand making nameless patterns with coral-pieces.
Watery sky, being slowly, diluted pink.
The Starfish is sleeping all alone. His happiness and his soul, burning out: Will he ever make it out?