From the edge of a chair

I am sitting in a chair, fabric stinking of brine and age, head craned, staring out into what was once a sea.
Tiny fragments of swimmers, fins and rings of vertebrae and jawbones no longer glubbing, poke into my bare feet, my toes attempting to find the sand underneath.
Pink and gray haze swallows the sky and I duck my head as if I could avoid the blanket of silence (save the screaming of birds! save the rumble of semis barreling past on a two lane highway!) smothering the valley.
The tides once ebbed and flowed here, the sharks swam above my head, the eels burrowed into ancient mud where the houses now crumble.
I am sitting in a chair, staring out at the water table of time.