Lost At Sea

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It's first light. I stand before the ocean, empty. All words have gone. What's left is pulled by the tide, by the light of the moon, out to distant horizons. I am a shell, a castaway.

A beloved has moved on from this planet. She paints with the clouds, whispers secrets in the wind. My friend is gone, and she is everywhere. I fill the shell of my body with her memory, with the blessing of having known her. I fill the shell of my body until it overflows. Even the shell of the body she left could not hold her. She is gone.

Sea foam skirts the wind at my feet, lifts and breaks as it scatters. Impossibly light. Born of the sea but not bridled to it. Seawater binds my feet to the earth, pulling me in deep. Small rocks flip end over end with the tug. I watch.

I feel distant, numb. I am a part of some greater vibration, attending from a galaxy away. Light unfolds across the sky.

I do nothing. The gift of my dear friend's smile is committed to memory, so delicate. Like the fragile exoskeleton of a crab, one day this too will be dust from which others are born.

I do nothing. I occupy space. The sun's light is captured by the globe of an earth-bound jellyfish. Its liquid orb magnifies the grains of sand which have snared it to land. I watch.

A mist gathers at the cliffs. I smell it coming. It is life. I am lost in the spray, in the foam. I am lost in the wonder of coming and of going. The sun rises above the mountains, and my long shadow stretches towards the sea.

My beloved friend gathers in the mist around me. She is everywhere. She is the light of the moon and what obscures the moon. I take comfort in the shell of my memories. I take comfort in her light.

She is with me. I am found.