Turtles

A conquest of worms. They live in festering wounds located under the shells of turtles and reside there for weeks on end, growing and shifting under the pressure. Sometimes, when the time is just right, you can see the heads of these worms peaking out from under the shell, squeezing their thickening bodies under its rim and out into the half-light world beyond. Flesh slips from their open maws, and it splatters against the dull sand at the watcher’s feet.

The turtles cannot leave the land when the worms nest themselves. They are bound to the beach, forced to wrestle their bulks across the sand for weeks on end before they can return to the ocean or, more often, they drop dead, worms wriggling from a few folds of exposed flesh.

The worms, free from their vessel, begin soon after to squeeze themselves beneath the sand. There they wait. They wait for the return of the turtles, the turtles that never do stop coming, no matter how many empty shells pile up on that beach. They’ve always come here, to this shore, and nested, waiting for the worms to rise and burrow deep into their flesh and lay.