The surface rolls over itself 8,755,453 times before I recognize its face. I watch it mutating in front of me, I feel it touching me, but all those colors, all that pigment distracts me: I fall into each singular pore, diving between skin cells and hair follicles. I fall into more and more space, the negation of the body, before I realize its presence, its meaning, and can confront it. It seems to pinch in several different places before it settles, seems to have nine different arms spread throughout Direction.

Why did you not tell me sooner? Why did you keep this a secret? Were you lying the whole time?

I was not. Often, I was only vaguely aware that it was there. It does not pass as time does, like a long sheath being passed over my eyes, transparent, looking up through to the sky through its watery barrier. For a while, it is too small to touch, too small to be significant, too small to name. I let it pass. Waves like this pass constantly; not all of them turn into waves. I pay attention to its size, whether or not it reaches the threshold point where it becomes visibly noticeable, where it receives it name, as if turning to stone within my throat after gathering so much sand and turns into Voice, into Word. It breaks through oceananic placenta, gives itself a body, and shouts in anger: the outrage of infancy.

I lied on the beach considering this. I wondered if truth really did have consistency, as they said, if it were smooth and narrow.

I looked over my shoulder and saw a girl squating naked in the sand, her breasts laying on her belly. The position of her body, arms, and breasts looked fake, that it shouldn't lay in that way. If it were a painting, I thought, it would not be realistic, and yet it was, there, in front of me, hyper-real, in utter imperfect. Her posture made her look ugly, more obese than she was, and yet, I wanted to touch her, feel her skin, trace my fingers along the creases in her skin.