of Sand and Sea

A week sinks into your blood stream. A language wraps itself around your tongue like it belonged there, your feet turn brown and accustomed to the brushings of sand along its ankles. I breathe like I had never forgotten how, and suddenly the world appears, reappears, exists again. The sound of foreign music across the rooftops, the crinkling of palm leaves against adobe. The air smells of grilled meats, salt water, sweat, something sweet between houses, my eyes squint against midday sunlight, brightly painted houses, the locals huddle inside dark corner stores while I spread eagle in the street, soaking up sunshine. My eyebrows fade, my shoulder freckle. The mornings are mad with birdsong, the nights are quiet. Today I sat at the edge of the ocean and thanked it for all the things I forget to say, forget to remember when winter sits in my chest like a lump of coal no one deserved. This ocean which remains, at every corner of the world, at ever corner of my crooked life. Everything that is anything remains at the other end of this return ticket. But I am armed to the teeth with sunshine now, with other turns of the tongue, with brightly painted chambers in my heart and something sweet between, I know everything remains but I am not who I was when we parted. I am sunshine now, just you 

try and 

stop me.