Reflections
Something about the sea.
You know the feeling - when the car slips off the highway down a familiar exit, trees and steelwork giving way to seagrass and soft, rolling dunes. The caravan of families - vehicles packed to the teeth with umbrellas, chairs, kids - eager to disembark and begin their clumsy trek to the shore. The salt, the sound, the first sight of her. Like seeing an old friend. Admitting you’ve let too much time pass. Promising it won’t happen again.
Maybe just the breadth of her. That first crest of waves and then endlessness. The way she appears to exhale and effortlessly extend her grasp on our world. Then reconsider, folding into herself, before stretching into that razor-thin cliff at the end of the world. Our universe reflected. Blue melting into blue.
Maybe that’s it - the blueness of it all. The mirrored sky, those swirls of cerulean, growing deeper in all directions. Your fingers rippled in her clear, cool surface. Then nothing but turqoiuse, navy, indigo, sterling - all the way down to your imperceiveable toes.
Where do they go, those toes? Your knees, your pelvis, your collarbone. Slipping into invisibility. Your body in sway, becoming tide. Decomposing. The alchemy of blood, bone and water. You are grateful to let go - almost, relieved.
You can come clean, she promises. I can keep a secret. I have kept so many for so long.
That welcoming tease, as if you could somehow trust her. As if she existed for your pleasure. That she is something to be floated on, waded in, swum through, or crossed. Like her throat is not deep in the core of the earth, waiting to open, to swallow you. Did we think we could tame her? What a lark. What hubris. I wonder if she knows we exist.
We claim her in pieces - a handful of sand, a well-honed shell. Explorers on the shore planting large umbrellas like flags on the moon. Here. Mine. Horizons of lego-sized rigs pulling oil from her veins. Aquariums filled with buckets of creatures from the reaches of our imaginations. It’s funny how we choose - which to admire, what to kill. An octopus at a marine sanctuary. Pulpo miso at Disfrutar.
Sometimes she sends us a sign. You saw it, right? An anglerfish, the Black Demon, no larger than a child’s palm, a tiny light hanging from her eyes, gasping at the surface right before the end. Something to marvel at. To bring our deepest fears into the light. Sometimes she sends a gift right to us. She can be generous when she wants to be.
Is it the memories? A timid toe and a firm hand. Her soft tide wrapped around your ankle - tugging, beckoning. The line between fear and bliss. Running below the surface or through a sea of birds. Sisters dreaming up a castle. Mothers standing at salute, mouthing no deeper. A forgotten photo in a drawer of two sandy grins, t-shirts to your knees. Close your eyes. Breathe in. The sharp inhale of cold. The after-tang of salt. The unendurable freedom of youth.
Is it even the sea we are speaking of? Is she big or are we small? Is she incapable of being understood or is it us we are trying to understand? Standing at her shores once again, at the altar of existence, you feel something close to reverence. Something like coming home. You are relieved to see her. You hope she will always be there. Everything unchanged.
Except you.
