Joyce’s stooped body couldn’t escape the scent of the roses lining the fence as she passed on her way to the bus stop. Her eyes were so red and irritated that when her granddaughter visited last week, Lauren wouldn’t stop mentioning it. “You should get some eyedrops,” she had said.

So, Joyce rumbled along in the front of the bus on the local route, headed to the drug store. The bus lowered, beeping its shameful beep. Finally, her cane rooted itself on the curb, and she stepped off, letting the young man—who smelled very deeply of marijuana smoke and had been waiting patiently—onto the bus.

She felt like she couldn’t avoid the smells anymore. She couldn’t walk fast enough to escape them, and something about the crook of her spine seemed to funnel the air right in. That must be what was wrong with her eyes, she thought. The smells kept getting into them.

The walk from the bus stop to the drug store’s entrance could’ve been shorter if she cut across the parking lot where the bus dropped her off in front of the grocery store. Instead, she stuck to the sidewalk as if it were a sandy beach before the immense ocean.

Joyce wondered what ocean water would feel like in her eyes. If she could just sit on some rock and open her eyes as a wave came in, maybe that would fix it all. But then her body might be lost from the rock, and if she did wash up, she’d be so bruised—looking like an amalgam of urchins and seaweed—that she’d never be recognized as a human body.

She hadn’t been to a beach in maybe ten years. Air blew at her as the automatic door opened, and the smells of carpet glue and lotion pummeled her nose. It had to be the spine, how she parted the air with the top of her head now, and how the air wrapped around her and eddied at her shoulders. That was why she smelled everything and her eyes hurt—she just knew it.

The carpet had been replaced, she noticed as she walked the aisles, with a slightly more green-blue than the gray-blue she’d seen last. She carried a basket and weaved through every aisle because if she was going to come all this way she might as well get everything she’d need: deodorant, toothpaste, hand cream, tissues, and cotton balls since the skin around her eyes had gotten too sensitive for the washcloth.

She found herself looking at the eyedrops. The generic brand said, “Lubricating eye drops for immediate eye relief.” On the back, the active ingredient was listed as carboxymethylcellulose sodium, 1%. Were her own tears also one percent carboxymethycellulose sodium? Were these the tears of someone else, like some poached magical being held captive and forced to cry? A siren, perhaps, perched on her rock near the ocean.

When she finally got back home, she wanted to nap, but before she closed her eyes, she was determined to use the eyedrops. She set the bag of drug store items on top of the toilet seat and found the small white plastic bottle under the bag of cotton balls.

One to two drops in each eye, the bottle said. Tilt your head back and look up, it instructed. Joyce thought the bottle was being naïve. “That’s the problem,” she said. “My head can’t tilt up like that anymore.”

The best she could do was look at herself head-on in the mirror and dribble the liquid onto her lower lashes. She blinked and blinked, hoping it would disperse.

While she napped, she dreamed of blooming into a thousand purple urchins, grasping onto rocks, feeling the tide flow in and out of her spines. She felt the gentle pluck of a siren’s hand and the generous crash of a rock plowing into her sharp parts, being slurped into this magical being, and exuded as tears.

– Jennifer Sheffield

Author’s Note: This is my first piece of published fiction, and it’s inspired by an illustration in Felicia Chiao’s Sketchbook 6 art book.