Here nor there

I sat in the darkness, drawn to thrashing at the shore (the bay was calm as glass). I sat on the sand and held a lifetime cradled in my thoughts and spoke through salt water streams and tried to sniffle back years.

My love shuffled through the grains worn down from tumble after tumble, my love tripped on kelp and plastic figurines, my love made its way into the sea where fishing boats sat on the horizon like bobbing supernovas. When snot and tears and grief had their fill I brought a handful of ocean (all that life!) to my face and doused my closed eyes with that familiar comfort. 

I crossed the sand, pockmarked with other people’s steps, back to the path home. A block away from the ocean, standing on a sandy sidewalk, it was quiet. Not totally silent as Pacific Beach could never be totally silent in that smart ass in the back of the class sort of way, but the crashing of the waves were muted, muddled behind surfboard clad bungalows and the rumble of Escalades down Mission. I walked a half mile towards an eventual sunrise before the waves made themselves known again. Reverberating against the buildings along the bay, skimming the water with that white-noise noise carried from a butterfly flapping its wings (or a fish swishing his tail?) thousands of miles away. 

Up close or far away, the sound is dominantly present. But when one is in that border region, that limbo of neither here nor there, it is hard to hear anything clearly.

Standing right at the waters edge looking into the tumult you hear it loud and full but the constant barrage of sound deafens you to the details. 
Giving the sea ample space to foam, to twist into itself, to reverberate the thunder of water crashing on grit you hear the nuances of each wave wrestling with the shore, but you can no longer see the water. 

In between, one can neither see nor hear anything clearly. 
There is always a choice.