Rockaway

You wake heavy, reluctant, knowing you’ll need convincing for every step. You wait for the coffee to steep with your eyes closed. Consider the feel of currents against your skin. Check work email and run a list of your obligations past your forehead. Think of freckles on your shoulders. Think of deep breaths and wide horizons. At last the arguments are superfluous. I stuff things in a bag, hop on a bicycle, and make my way to the edge of the island, where the boats to the outer world lie.

I barely have time to deposit my bags on the sand before I race down the slope to the water’s edge. Greet the ocean like a friend, like a cure, I dive into the first wave that will have me. Let it wash the heat off me, the weight. I roll around in the surf and feel eight years old again. When I at last step out and make my way to the warm sand, it’s as though the last few months have been erased from my muscle memories, as though I can hear again my own voice inside my head.

Oh we have been so buried so deep of late.

But for a short moment today, I believe we can make it back up again.