In Waves

It happens in waves.
The ocean is calm out there but the waves crushing pebbles on the shore don't know this. It foams and leaps and dissolves into the cracks between the grains, it drains into the depths and remembers itself among the fish and kelp. 

Old patterns twist and turn and snake through my head and sink through my shoulders into my lungs, absorbed into my heart. They slip through fluttering aortic valves and shimmy through capillary walls down into my gut where the truth lies. I digest or vomit them out, depending on the taste and time.

It happens in waves.
The fog rolls in skipping over ripples, over seagulls, over sunburnt children playing tag with the surf. The fog envelops us all and blankets us in quiet and hope and giddy melancholy.
I can't see all of you next to me. Could I see all of you before?
The fog makes us doubt who we are, who we were, but makes us want to run headlong into crashing froth of salt and water and life and be blanketed by water crystals above and below the surface.
You evaporate into the dimming mist and the who you were is unclear.


My heart jumps into my dirty-cuffed sleeve. I smile into the absence around me. The nothing filled with everything. I am reaching into my heart to pull out the sound of love, of peace, of gratitude. I know the hand I really need to hold is my own.

It happens in wind and sand and fog.
It happens above the surface and below in the depths.
It happens when I stop to scribble a note about a sunset and a stranger starts a conversation about words art connection faith karma.
It happens when I am quiet and break my heart open to listen to myself.
It happens in waves.