Body One is flat on their back, staring at the sky. Body Two paces until ruts appear in the wet sand.
“Fine, I’ll take your back rolls,” One gives in, “but that means you have to take the entire beard. Even those thin hairs growing on my lower neck.”
Two squats low, “Back rolls and breasts are a set pair. We already locked that in. Besides, I have my own facial hair I’m trying to get rid of.”
One laughs, “Three hairs on your chin is not facial hair.”
Between them: colorful shells, rocks, glass fragments from rum bottles, shattered portholes, spyglass lenses. All of this ocean detritus is stacked into a rickety cairn.
One rolls over and reaches for a piece of moss-green glass, from the undecided pile. “Don’t you dare think about placing that on the stack,” Two says.
“What if I make it a three-part deal? Back rolls, breasts and my thick knuckles.”
All along the beach, hopeful bodies arrive. They are offered a spot along the sand stretch, a stack of ocean garbage, and time. Flesh is bartered. Parts argued and agreed upon.
It is an endless chorus of wants.
Varicose veins for the moles at the back of my thighs.
Fine, I’ll keep the size six feet, but that means you don’t get this curly hair. No way I’m taking that Adam’s apple for something as lousy as a clit.
Blue eyes are worth more than hazel and you know it.
Each pair typically starts with the big asks: genitalia, face structure, height, hair, nose. That takes twenty minutes, tops. It is the small stuff that slows everyone down. Cuticles. Toe length. Space between teeth. Moles. Eyebrow thickness. Skin elasticity. When One and Two first arrived—after such a long wait—they were greeted by an Official Body.
“Trade?” Official had said, “don’t you want a penis?” It was unclear who they were talking to.
“I would rather be a sentient earlobe.” One scoffed. Two just shook their head, repeating the word, stretching it out in different places to see if it would snap: penis, pee-niss, pe-niiisss.
Official was immaculately crafted. The best of everything. No compromises. The kind of body that existed only in store windows and dreams.
Official sat with them at first, explaining the rules—making sense of the process, ocean leftovers, cairn-stacking—pointing out the beauty of an unending sunset that cast everything in perpetual ochre.
It was like someone desperate to sell a used car without an engine. Or a house with hidden faults.
“Penis?” Official would repeat, pointing at the first, still-untouched piece of glass. “A penis is useful,” they continued. “You can stand up when you pee. You can swing it at other penises like you’re fencing or jousting. Sometimes, at night, if you cup it, it can keep your hands warm.”
“What if you took it and wore it on your forehead?” Two asked One, “not all the time, but like, for special occasions.”
“Unallowed.” Official said, staring at the sunset. “What if we shared it. A fortnight back and forth.” “Unallowed.”
Two wanted a rigid body that was all sinew, potential, and an enlarged clit. One wanted everything to be soft, imperceptible, except for a nub between their legs that could be washed once a week, and forgotten.
“A body has to have certain parts.” Official sighed, their gaze on other pairs, and other choices, “It has responsibilities.”
Finally, Official excused themselves to greet other newcomers. To point out sunsets. To say haven’t you always wanted this, and only this. To hand the penis over to the penis-wanter in quick flourish. To partake in the celebratory carrot cake that was wheeled out when transformation was agreed upon and the paperwork signed.
All through this, One and Two stacked their cairn high with empty promises—souring into the inevitable trading back and forth of individual strands of hair.
Official Body does not understand this lack of compromise. This holdout.
“I wouldn’t even want feet,” One yells, bodying the stacked cairn, trying to keep Official from knocking it over again.
“As I’ve said before, you cannot spend weeks on the distance between your eyes.” They are tired now, disinterested. “What if we want the opposite of what everyone else wants?” Two asks. Official pauses, “And what is that?”
All along the beach, hopeful bodies arrive. They are offered a spot along the sand stretch, a stack of ocean garbage, and time. Flesh is bartered. Parts argued and agreed upon.
Two looks at One. One knocks the cairn over.
Official gently ushers them further down the shoreline, making space for newcomers.
Where the pair go now, others split to avoid them. Going quiet. Defending their own cairns. As if hiding the secrets of body-making.
“I want wings,” One says to Two.
“Likewise,” Two says. “Actually no, I would like have enormous tentacles that spring out from a glowing orb that is my mouth. Or a body that is so not-there it floats.”
One grows a little quiet, contemplative, “I would be a sexless instrument that nobody wanted.”
“Or the opposite.”
“Or both of those things at once in one body.”
All around them, cairns are stacked and transformation comes.
“What if we want the opposite of what everyone else wants?” One asks, trying on Two’s words. Stretching them out. Seeing if they snap under strain. Two just sits near the shoreline, so close that the water can brush at the formless space where feet should go. Not-there enough to even cause ripples. The sunset light is ochre, as always. The choices un-stacked and altogether too wrong. One says that they should probably begin again, but Two wants a few more moments. “This time around, I’ll take the penis.”
Ark Ramsay is a trans, non-binary Barbadian writer. Their fiction centers queer, Caribbean identities, and coping with a warming earth - the fragility of an island ecosystem that cannot fight back. Their fiction has appeared in A-Line and Small Axe, and has been a finalist for the Inaugural Story Foundation Prize. Ark began the MFA at The Ohio State University in the Fall of 2019.