Fin

All is quiet and still, so I'm not sure what woke me up on this morning. I get up from the same position I fell asleep in and cast a long gaze out the window. The sun is just beginning to tint the sky above the clouds lazing on the horizon line - the last remnants of some tropical storm or another, passing by the peninsula a few hundred miles to the east.

I watch the surf wander in and out, sliding over the shore. Bits of seaweed trace the contour of where high tide had stretched in earlier hours. The dunes have been smoothed by wind and sea during the night.

I had come here, thousands of miles from anything familiar, to try and forget you - though I knew that wasn't possible. Particularly when I take you everywhere with me. Not literally, of course. But you are nonetheless ever-present. Your memeory, and "memories" of what could have been and what will never be, a perpetual constriction on my heart. The hole left in my world by your absence ever gaping.

I get dressed, having as little interest in what I put on as I do with anything else in life right now. I pad downstairs, grab a cup of coffee and wander out on to the silky sand.

I spend a lot of time lost in my own thoughts these days. I gather with friends, try to drown out the deafening silence with deafening noise. It works for a while, sometimes. But it doesn't last long. My friends hate to see me so sad. Cheer up! they say, and offer some philosophical self-help quip about how holding on to something that will not return can only hinder your own progression. No one seems to understand that I simply can't act as if nothing happened, that you never existed. That I never really loved you because you were here too briefly. No one understands that just because I cannot hold you in my arms, that you cannot still hold my heart.

Seemingly now that you are gone more than ever before.

Everyone seems to know what's best for you when they have no idea what it's like to love someone so much, that you nearly forget how to breathe when they leave you.

The sand is different here than anywhere else. It feels as if I'm walking on tiny pearls, and clings to my feet in white slippers. The perpetual breeze coming in from the sea runs invisible fingers through my hair. The waves are bigger by the shore than they appeared to be from my window, but oddly slow of pace. They rumble in and massage the shore. I close my eyes and let the sound rinse my aching soul. I breathe deep the sweet salty air and feel all other thoughts fall away but the ones which never do - the thoughts of you.

The sun is rising, and it glints at me over the wandering clouds. I ponder the dawn of my new life, what its purpose and meaning is, to have lost so much and lived to tell. I wonder if I will ever be happy again. If I will ever laugh once more, and truly mean it.

I've been praying to God for a long time now, calling out to Him for help in managing my heartache. Sometimes I feel Him with me. Times like this morning. We communicate without words - more with feelings and impressions - and He soaks into me much as the sea vanishes below the surface of the sands as it draws back into itself. I know that the best thing I can do is lay my burdens in His hands. But I just haven't been ready.

I think of you always. I can almost feel your skin, and smell your scent. I imagine your hands in mine. I imagine that you are walking the water's edge with me rather than I alone on this peaceful morning. I wish I knew why you had to go.

The morning sky is bright with color now. Down the beach a man is combing up the seaweed. In the other direction, a couple is combing for treasures brought in from the waves sent by that distant storm. Seagulls scream overhead. The surf carries on its continuous song.

Though I could swear I just took a sip only a moment ago, my coffee is now cold and bitter in my cup.

I look at the large dollup of fucshia and indigo cloud that is cradling the morning sun. I suddenly feel the time is right.

And so, I let you go.