I find myself at the whim of the sea, the sensation of emerging from a salted water and breathing in the cool air as the wind cools against my skin. The shimmer of a million dimes in a blue-green haze of an ocean. I need to drown my Blackberry, need to unplug, need to remove myself as a slave to the blinking red dot of a message. I need to stop the reflexive lurch for the phone. I need to fall for the enduring lure of an empty hammock.
I need to stir the sugars that have rested at the bottom of my jar.
I need to taste the kiss of the water, the salt of the sea, the warming gel of the sun against my back. I need to feel the crush of the sand, the slope of the earth to the waves. I need to float aimless. I need to submerge, and see the kaleidoscope of the sun against a sandbar.
I need to drift, I need to untie the rope against the piling. I need the slightest tug of a wind against a sailcloth. I need to hear the drowning of waves. The crush of a curl against a jetty, the white foam, the taste of an ocean that is so reminiscent of a kiss, a salty, craven crush of mouths.
The ocean is a violent lover, and a placid partner. She calls, she cries. She waits.
She is eternal, green-eyed and jealous. Hateful of my wooden stance on firm ground. Balance, the ability to stand, lie, lay, lope. She hates solid footing. Despises.
She is tumultuous, she is uneven, bending to a Moon for tides to fall and rise. She stirs anger, storms, pretty petulant lightning in waves and wind.
I crave her comfort, the loss of horizons when immersed in her depths, surrounded by a airful of lungs, floating in her arms. She has such long and loving arms, wrapping across me as I drift and slow, rise and ebb, the Moon calling her higher and lower.
She could crush me. A mere sweep, a brush of her will. She holds me in such a delicate, poignant pose, knowing the sheer depth of her grip is more than enough to suffocate me.
I breathe in her scent from afar, the slight salt and exotic taste of her as she crosses sands and time for me. She bursts and rolls at my feet, angry and submissive. Daring me to come into her and drown. Just for a moment. And then release me back to my air, my ground.
She scars me with her salt, tattoos me with her tides. I fall into her, swimming upstream, diving beneath a carpet of golden green glazes to emerge breathless into a sky of winking stars.
And I could listen to her call to me, wave after calling wave. Lulled by her voice as I lay in the lure of an empty hammock.
