And I was finally back there, on the smooth, flat sands surrounded by the driftwood and the echoes of sea birds. My chest, full of salty air, felt the coldness more than any other part of me and my eyes burnt from the wind and held back tears.
On the horizon the thick bed of clouds touched the distant islands and in a way I wanted to be one. An island. Away from here. I told myself I could reach them, I told myself it would be better there. Somehow I thought it would be.
From the years before, I remembered a song that was stuck deep in my memory. The lyrics haunting me, somehow always singing, "Our anchor we'll weigh, our sails we will set,
The friends we are leaving we'll never forget".
Remembering. The coldness of nostalgia.
I moved slowly, methodically towards the water, foot by edging foot until it kissed my bare feet and filled the gaps between my toes. I'd never crossed over this threshold before, this border, beyond the safety of land. The sea, water which always seemed so far away, an unknown.
My mind told me she could be out there, floating, looking now, at the same sky as me. The clapping hands of a great ocean greeting us both, ascending, descending. I thought I could find her there. I would stand in this spot for hours and days just watching, waiting, hoping. This place was somewhere I'd been to a thousand times but for this first time I really knew why I was here.
Now listen; "God of mercy, you wash away our sins in water". This, written on paper folded squarely in my shaking hand. I told myself it was simple, still better. The beauty of simplicity here, water, land, separation, silence. Such a strange inner peace considering a heart which is far from stable.
Understand me, I don't know where people go, but I miss them sadly.
Then, approaching closer, the water at my ankles, my knees, my waist. Cooling me, calming me with deep, heavy breaths as the surrounding noise, the static, disappeared on the wind and back over the dunes behind me. I was left there, alone, only with the words "I can almost see you".
Distance. Time. Struggle. Love.
And then, on my knees, in silence, I felt real and I felt free and I felt pure.
