The Sponges

Once there lived a girl who was, in fact, more like a sponge than a girl. Her soft yellow hair curled around her ears and her lips were always chapped. She didn’t speak much.

One sunny August afternoon, slurping around the water’s edge, she saw something that caught her eye. She moved closer. It was, she realized, a sponge; she had never seen another before. She sat next to it and everything was quiet for a while; neither of them said anything. The sun shone bright.

The girl loved it hard and, as it was a porous thing, the sponge just lapped all that love right up. If she squeezed it hard enough, the sponge would emit some half-digested liquid but, according to its nature, it was no liquid of its own making. They sat there together on the beach, the afternoon lasting forever, and the girl told stories to the sponge in a way she hoped it would understand, as it had no point of reference. It absorbed all the words she said and took them in for itself until there was nothing left of them except for in its hollow memory, in its cavernous belly. It absorbed all the good things, all the beautiful things, which the girl spoke of: daisies in green fields, swimming in cold lakes, slices of mango, the way people’s eyes look when they are in love. The sponge was still and silent, as sponges are. The girl looked at it fondly, and then looked to the water. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but changed her mind. When she continued it was not without some small, vague sense of regret. The sponge absorbed the bad things she spoke of, too – for she knew it was not possible to ignore the bag things – and, well, bad things have a habit of swallowing good ones. With the sad things, something about its density shifted. The sponge grew heavier, lapping in the tears that fell from her face, until it was swollen with sorrow. Though she saw the effect her words were having, the girl could not retract her stories because she, too, was laden with them. The everlasting afternoon began to close; the setting sun burned copper on the horizon. Two sponges, sitting on a beach together, with nobody to squeeze them.