A sacred place

On those dark, winter evenings, when the frost tinged wind burns your skin with each weak sputtering breath, I find myself longing for a crisp walk along the shore. Sand, not yet touched on this new day, another beginning for every version of myself. Trudging down to the sea, like a breaking seal, one step at a time, the sand deteriorates its shell. Longing for companion, desperate, starved sharks circling dancing toes, sneaking up the rubber sealant and making a new home in nailbeds. I push through aching sand dollars. Crystalized salt in worthy gashes across my chapped nose and lips when windchill drops below the cut. With fog my breath gets lost, careful, steady gasps for the cleanest air. Another savory inhale leads to another chilling kiss from nature’s icy lips on the out. And as if a gunshot went off, an overwhelming collective moan of siren wails pierce through the ice cube gelatin atmosphere. Stuck, frozen, upside-down dessert pie in the horizon, not a single movement throughout the cry. Freedom awaits beyond moonrise- creamy egg yolk, breaking and falling for my consumption. Slow like honey, I reach for that feast but I am too far, just intoxicatingly close. Underneath the abyss is beautifully raw and polarizing, golden fragmented reality. Silence is rare but this is it. Cool, shallow tidals filling me with waves, hushing the tinnitus. I try to stay past the shore but always find myself consumed and falling under, drowning. “This is so beautiful,” bubbles through my sandstone tongue; coolant brained and crucifix fingered. The end of the shore, the beginning of the sunset. A new sunrise within the oceans' backdoor. Gasping, falling under. “I’m drowning, and It’s so beautiful. I’m drowning and I can finally hear it.”