A sea of blue. The wide open sky before me, falling neatly in a fade of pink and orange hues into the ocean. A far off horizon of some distant connection, somewhere closer within my mind. The warm salt water along my skin, I submerge my body, soft sand against the soles of my feet as I wade out further into the ocean. I have wanted to feel the world fall away beneath me, behind me, to drift out into the far away blues and allow it to move as I stay still. 

So I wade further out into the water until I can’t touch anymore. I close my eyes, captivated by the warmth surrounding me, bringing my head underneath the surface. Eyes closed, the pressure of the sea enclosing me. I am both weightless and feeling heavy, enveloped by the formless water, moving freely in resistance. I come back up, a tropical breeze against my wet skin, and I lay back. The ocean moves around my limbs and I stare up at the sky, white clouds darkening along the roof of the world where stars sparkle in fragmented constellations along the dusky blue. 

Perhaps I can float away. Arrive back at a time that is both at home within me and gone. To move back and forth, to spiral in the past and future while simply arriving within the moment as it is. That’s what this is. This feeling within the ocean, gathering all parts of me so I can let them go. So I can let go all of what was and stop caring about what is yet to come. The unknown and the memories fading, remembered in segments that dissipate and recreate themselves as my experiences grow.

Oh, to stay in this moment. In this water. In this emergence, this submergence. To forget the world for what it is and allow it to drop away, to be what it is. I know that when my feet come back to solid ground, when I am no longer floating, when the sea no longer fills my ears, I will be engulfed once more by everything I am supposed to be doing. Gravity will impress upon me the requirements of my humanity and my mind will once more expand, creating lists and filling my senses with words, with obligations. 

Let that be for another day. Let that be for the moments of the continuation. For now, this connection of a story that the ocean tells, I will stay within it. I will allow both nothing and everything. I will move with the body and the motions of this body of water, filling myself with the sounds she speaks to me. The humming, the whirring, the crackling. The skin, salty and wet across the aeons. Here there is an indefiniteness, a sense of being something else. Of being more. Of being what I am without having to think of it in comparators. 

Here I remember what beauty means without having to put it into words. 

So let it be tomorrow when all of what I have to do returns to me. For now, among the stars, within the vastness of a greater sea, let me stay with this generosity she holds me in.