New

It's just a few steps, past the birch trees, at the end of the path. Warm cliffs, smoothed by the ice ages, sloping down to the salty waters of the west coast. We find a spot near the shoreline, arrange the day as it has been for decades: coffee thermoses, homemade sandwiches, store-bought biscuits. They brought you here because they know how much better you breathe when your eyebrows whiten, when your shoulders brown and your lips taste of the sea. They brought you here because they know how four years away ache in your very bones.

Somehow, four years are magically washed away with one dive into the ocean, one evening at their dinner table. Somehow, none of the empty days and quarantined miles remain in your spine, though they were lodged there like splinters every day that came before. I sleep so well at night, it's hard to believe the darkness was ever that close. 

Something new is coming, but not yet, not now. 

Now we rest.
Now, we breathe.