'Tastes Like Salt' by Alison Woodhouse

I want to be fluff, I say, the kind you blow off the head of a dandelion, pow.

Please be serious, you say. What do you want really?

I want superpowers like flying and disappearing and biffing the head off a giant robot who’s threatening the planet’s existence. I want to be a clean machine, sucking up the landfills, mashing up the metal in my cavernous insides and pouring out pure ozone. Actually, if I’m honest, all I want really is to float.

And why, you ask, in your literal, literally driving me mad, usual way, would you want to float?

Isn’t it blindingly obvious, I don’t say?  

Because when the icebergs melt and the oceans rise and the land disappears only the floaters will survive, then the floating population will make towns and cities out of all the plastic that will rise to the surface of our landlessness and we’ll have to learn to dive like south sea pearlmen and the best of us will have lungs like iron and us floaters never cry, no we don’t, and melting icebergs should taste like salt so why do they taste of nothing at all?

You’ve got that face on again that says you have no idea why we ever got married and you really want to talk about it but I’m not going to exhale, no I’m not.

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First published by Reflex Fiction.