“Mean Low Water” is inspired by a formative friendship lost to mental illness. The piece takes place in a landscape of constant transition, surrounded by waves of guilt and grief bounding in constructive interference. The reader is forced to accept the certainty and inevitability of the rising tide. The set of memories I present were never photographed and preserved. Instead, they have been transmuted and distorted by time, sea spray, and the Northern California fog. 

Cole Pragides studied creative writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and attended the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He has been a Semifinalist for the Adroit Prize, a Finalist for the Plentitudes Prize, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Find him flying a kite. 

I: @redwoodribcage