Hands in the grass and feet shake off the sand from this, my walk along the beach. Sunny skies? No, not today. It was grey and misty. The clouds moving us forward like the world wanted us to stay still and silent. Whisper to me in the breeze is what it told us. And in the distance there was thunder that only the gods, the people before us, could hear.

When I sat down on this sandy grass, my hair whipped around me like it was sheltering me from the calm before the storm. Clouds moving fast and changing, rolling into shapes I’d never seen, never remembered, until the night before.

I looked down to the edge of the world, where the land stopped and there was only ocean. Waves and seagulls scolding one another. Hugged my knees against my chest and listened softly to the waves crashing on the shore. The sound of water pummeling, pounding into the earth as if it could smooth every craggy rock into roundness.

I could taste air scented by sea and salt and grit and kelp. Grey green ocean, how I’ve missed you. And I could only cry as I sat beside the water weaving in and out of the earth as little birds on spindly little legs ran to and from the breathing waves. Foamy bubbles sometimes stopping and then carried back into the sea. Floating and floating, then pop. Dissipate. Into something else.

Beneath the surface, something looming. A great big ocean and what do we see when we look at it, but endless waves. Crashing into the night. Sun sets down and I’m still sitting. Moon over head and I can feel myself wondering. Looking out to my endless sea, my great protector. And I wonder if it hears me.

…