OVER + OVER

I’m 17, watching the ocean waves drag hard and slow. It hits me that my grandmother will not see me graduate high school. My senior picture, with the fake tuxedo and bad haircut, is a version of me she will never know. She carried wisdom from out of this time in her paper hands. I sit with this, watching the waves at the edge of the world.

I’m 22, walking along the violent tide. Gray fog blankets everything and the ground is unsupportive. The world is in free fall. I am too. The path forward is unclear. I clench my fists and make a promise to keep walking into the wailing mist.

I’m 24, kissing you in my car from the cliff above the coast. The moon is suspended. Our breath is hurried. I run my hands through your untamed hair. You reach up and slowly peel my hands away. Your skin is a soft blue from the moon, and you tell me you are moving to Oxford. Everything chills as our palms rest together. We don’t need streetlights to illuminate the truth. The ocean’s fading glow is enough.

I’m 26, admiring a thin row of orange bonfires disappearing into the night’s hungry maw. The ritual is underway, the black water thunders. We open our palms toward the flames, feeding the light with paper that used to be significant. It will be the last time we are together. I take in the earth, the cedar and ash. Embers scatter towards the sky, electric with possibility. We are ready to leave the past behind.

I’m 29, tracing the outline of your ring. There are no waves. No wind. The horizon is a deep blue, calm. Everything will change except my feelings for you.

I’m 35. This beach has kept my secrets without judgment. I’m reminded that the arc of our lives will come back to the borrowed tide. The waves churn with an unseen inertia as they push towards the shore. The sand and the salt meet in ways that are familiar but different, always repeating for those willing to listen.