Hello goodbye
She was standing on the perfectly manicured lawn; the thick green blades of grass seemed to wrap around her toes. She felt as if in a 50s sitcom one way and in a silent movie in another.
Behind her, the palm trees waved as if calling her, but by a name she no longer went by. In front of her, in stark contrast – the steady, rhythmic waltz of the waves felt chaotic somehow. Though gentle, they seemed unbridled, chaotic, moving in synchronicity of its own volition.
The depths of what was spread out before her, she knew, was something she could not measure with her eyes. She also knew that if the perceived beauty and control of the sea decided it wanted to wrath, to rise and storm; It could, to a degree she could never understand.
To a degree, she wouldn’t survive.
“and do I want to”, she thought.
The earth beneath her felt cool, sending a slight shiver through her body.
“Perhaps I can meet it,” she continued deep in trance-like thought.
The movement of the sea seemed to move her. She stood on solid ground, but I felt like the whole of the earth was an island, moving gently, tethered to nothing. She suddenly understood why seafaring explorers told stories of mermaids, or sea monsters that lured them, in a trance, to a watery death.
Indeed, the wind blew and made whistling sounds as if calling to her. She stepped forward – her body swayed; she felt drunk by the way the waves moved.
She stepped forward again, inebriated a little more each passing moment, it seemed. In the distance to her right a seagull called her out of her head and she once more felt the roots of the earth hold her steady.
“What am I doing?!”, she thought. A slight panic was birthed in her, but quickly faded as a fish emerged up out of the water only to plop back in. She looked at the rippling water, searching for herself but, instead, envied the now disappeared fish. “Maybe I can learn to breathe in the water……It’s not as if I can breathe out here.” Her eyes watered.
“To have my ocean meet the one before me. I bet they reach the same depth; see the same darkness, rise and fall in anger just the same. I’d simply be….. Going home.”
She stepped forward; this time into the cold water that had promised her warmth and understanding. “There’s no sense in stopping”, she thought, walking steadily deeper into the sea.
The sun rose above her at that moment when the water reached her throat. Cold, wet talons seemed to grasp at her neck as the sun peeked above her from behind a bed of clouds. “You’ve come to say goodbye,”, she whispered aloud..
“Here I am”, she thought as she closed her eyes. The water now completely submerging her – she was no longer in control. “Here I am to say hello.”
