Like a fury from the ocean

I wrote a fantasy about you. I was twenty seven and pregnant with your baby. In creative writing class at college, I wrote something about riding the bus all night and a sea of empty parking spaces at the end of the line. Wind across the blacktop like a fury from the ocean. In my dream, we shared a flask and I slept on your shoulder. I had your child inside of me, and I wanted to be lost with you. I wanted us to not have a home.

My dad was mean to me when I was a kid. There are moments that rise to the surface of my memory, slick-backed and shooting water in all directions. We went to the beach and I walked with my dad to the pier.

There were fishermen and seagulls and my dad hated me, but there were moments like these.

I leaned over the railing and watched the water crashing against the beams. I watched as the earth churned, inspired by magic deep inside its core. There was magic in these moments. I loved what he loved for a moment. I forgot who I was. He pointed to a dark spot in the water. It grew and grew to the size of a dinner table and the shell of a sea turtle emerged, alien and mythic and black, my heart stood still.

It was only a moment. I saw four legs released at her sides. She took a breath and disappeared under the foam and agitation. I worried about her in the surf. I wanted her to go back, to go far away from here.



photo by dan zen


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I linked up with Write On Edge. Today's prompt was “The cure for anything is salt water….sweat, tears or the sea.”
~ Isak Dinesen, pseudonym of Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke


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