Turtles trudge toward turbulent turf taking tediously tiring trails toward the tantalizing tempo, the turning tide. They think the territory’s thick. The temperature’s tropical though torrid. They’re timid though together trying to track the terrible time. Then the time turns to torture. Twigs trip toddler turtles thoroughly trimming their ten tiny toes. They tolerate tears tempting to trickle, though turmoil takes the throne. They’re trembling. The tide’s threatening to tumble through them. That’s troubling though timely. Toxins take the turtles to the tomb. Tomorrow they’ll taste thankful thoughts. They’ll tackle tricky tasks triumphantly. That’s their tragically tranquil tale. That’s the truth.

I turn the rough edges in my hand, stone chipped sharp, shining black in the slanted light.

This is an arrowhead, and I didn’t find it. I have never found an arrowhead, but have always wanted too, always. It takes a special kind of looking, and not only with the eyes. It takes the right kind of desire.

My desire is too greedy. That’s why I never find them. My friend, Mara, she found this. She has the right kind of desire, coming from her heart, and for the right reasons, for the delight of making contact.

It feels like that, as though this carefully chipped piece of stone is one end of a story that can be read backwards, through time. As though the hands that shaped it so artfully have somehow rubbed off here, left smudges of their purpose, their intent. Holding onto the sharp little point, their thumb was here. Contact. Through the connective tissue of time, unbroken, our hands touch their hands.

Following this arrowhead’s story, the flight it made through the air, which gathered memory, carried it towards the future. The moments when it was leased, and flew, and struck flesh, premeditated, are etched into its glassy reflective surface. Jagged edges made for puncture.

It raises questions down the back of my neck. Questions I can’t brush off, or hold, which form misshapen syllables, which linger in my mouth. Questions too specific to answer.

Who made this?

Not which people.

Which person.

What did he wear while he chipped, stone against stone. Who mended his shirt, quietly in the firelight, was she humming. What was the arc of his back, and which foot was never quite covered, at night, in his bed. What was his bed, a mat of shaved cedar bark? Did he lay in it warm, with his lover’s calm body, and whisper of nothing, and laugh hushed laughter, about mice and water. Did he have a secret spot, between her ribs, where he would wiggle a finger, and make her gasp. Did he call her something funny, something about the scent of drying fish, bathed in smoke between lath of cedar. Did he call her name, teasing, when she was stooped in the stream, cleaning again his clothing, stained in blood. Did she scowl and then, without meaning to, smile up at him.

Or did they argue there, in jagged whispers, about the tide, and the fish, and the deer’s sticky blood.

What was the weight of his heaviest word, the weight of his bowstring pulled tight? What was the weight of his daughter, held at chest height, when, growing strong, she fell in the tidepools, scraped her skin on barnacles, and cried.

What was the shape of the sound, when, from a high peak he heard the voice of his brother, calling his name, was it bitter, or sweet?

Was he a man? A boy? In what way did he vanish form this earth, leaving behind his body to rejoin all things. Who carried him, then. What was the weight?

I think of them all, laid out on the sand at small pox bay. The pebbled gravel where they had spent their lives, cooking, bathing, talking, now pressing into their skin forever.

The water is cold here, too cold. It cooled their fevers until hypothermia brought them still, and they spread on the beach, all of them, until a white settler found them all, like a tribe of brown seals sunning themselves, dead.

We know this, but we know nothing. The strangers who lived here for thousands of years are layered into the ground, where our eyes can’t find them. Their intricate cultures have traveled away, and the remnants erode onto the beaches, broken fragments in the white shell middens, strata of overlaid heaps, from centuries of eating shellfish by the beach, and throwing the shells to the ground.

This place is my home, it is my homeland. In a way it is my entire country. This small island, within the chain of islands, in the waterway that is now called Puget Sound. Technically, it is a part of Washington state, a part of the United States, though barely, it is so close to Canada, in fact, it almost was Canada. I have spent most of my life on this little chunk of land, its rocky shores ringed in water, unbroken by bridge. The sea that bounds it, contains my entire life.

But through the scope of time, my time here, my cultures time here, with its own history, its own rich culture which develops year by year, is nothing. It is a film on the surface, a bright jarring clash of glass and plastic scattered above the deep middens, littering over history’s shifting archive, which wears away tide by tide, onto the beach.

I want to know something, their names, which have fallen as sound to the earth, and become layered in strata upon strata in the ground, stains of vibration. Blooming grasses release them again and again, in silent explosions. And again and again I know nothing.

The strangers who lived in our land are printed here, impressions between the hills and the dunes of sand, lasting and empty.

I flip over the arrowhead. It is artfully made, it is still sharp. I run my thumb along it, the cutting edge a connective link. Someone touched this, made it, someone with knowing hands, practiced and sure. They used it, discarded it. Through the connective tissue, of time, unbroken, our hands touch their hands.

I'm writing this mainly for whomever finds it:

Today it seems global disease struck. While the symptoms may vary, most agree the body experiences brain death, and then abrupt "revival." At this point they say the lack of oxygen to the brain while allowing them to function, they essentially become "rabid dogs." No longer your loved one. We have all lost someone and the outbreak began been just shy of 24 hours.

This is the personal portion.

My name is Marilyn Thompson. I was a mother of two, Brian Jackson Thompson and Sarah Grace Thompson. They passed along with their father Dan Riley Thompson. They were loved and will live in on my memory.

I don't know what happens from here. I'm afraid the world's too far gone to ever come back from this. 

I feel like I've gone mad. Maybe I have. I'd prefer it over this reality.

They say we're in a state of emergency. No shit.

A 222-word sentence.  There, I wrote it. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad,bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad,bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad,bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, joke.

I really don't believe in run-on sentences, heck just add a comma every once in a while and make it flow smoother than butter, sweet butter churning the summer heat with just you and your grandma sitting out back under the porch top listening the the silent hums of the red wood trees, and what beautiful trees they are; some days I just go out and lie in a hammock and stare at those beautiful trees all afternoon, feel God's warmth radiate down my spine all peaceful and quiet, but quiet with a prescience of course, ah and what a crazy prescience it is, I mean just the other day I was out at the local grocery mart picking up some bananas and milk- that's right I'm the person that makes a twenty minute trip so that I can have fruit mixed in with my cheerios- and any who that Margret Matlin walks up to me and says "girl the good Lord put you on my mind recently", now surely I won't go into detail (if I told you everything Ms. Matlin had to say you'd be here till the next full moon-two years from now), but it was quite the comforting little moment...now I do believe I was telling you why I don't believe in run-on sentences...

Carl watched the wisps of smoke curl away from the ends of his fingers and disperse into the blanket of stars above him. "Isn't it interesting," he mused, "How affected our perception of the universe is by that one puff, and yet the universe itself is hardly affected at all? And yet so many people believe that the stars rise and set for us."

"Of course," Neil said. "Many young students come to me complaining about the existential dread induced by my description of the size of the universe and illusion of time."

Carl touched his thumb and forefingers together and looked through them to the sky. "I've never understood that sentiment. I speak often about our place in the universe and its indifference to us, but that shouldn't require us to have a negative reaction in response. The universe should fill you with a sense of wonder and gratitude- for the fact that we have the capability to understand it if nothing else."

"Some people find it difficult to be grateful for chaos. They want order in their understanding, need things to fit into their boxes- and by fit I mean they don't just want orderly; they want small and orderly. They want to be the grandiose. It isn't enough to have infinite universes inside of them; for some reason they feel as if ALL the universes need to be inside of them." Neil sent another puff of smoke into the atmosphere. "Watch as it goes," he said. "I'm creating more Chaos. And chaos means that every tiny, infinitesimal change affects the entire future of the entire universe. It's all about sensitive dependence."

"That's true." Carl thought a second. "Although, in the grand scheme of things, the effect is still negligible comparatively. It's our ability to piece together all the effects which is most impressive."

"I don't know," Neil replied. "That's not how I see it. Chaos means that all of our collective actions together, along with every animal and every motion of every planet, star and black hole, are working together to determine our fate. The universe may be enormous, but it means that you are a part of something huge, a piece of the collective puzzle of that galaxy and that what you do actually does make a difference."

"Alright, well, want to see this puzzle piece create an epic change of energy?"

"What kind of energy?"

"I'm about to show you the extent of my potential," Carl replied, and dove headfirst, somersaulting down the grassy hill.