Ocean Bride

It was a busier week than I’d have liked, so instead of a usual essay, here’s just a random little creative something (probably also because I’m missing the ocean).

They were walking by the ocean, letting the waves wash over their bare feet.

She was quiet for a few minutes then said slowly, as if pushing through her hesitation, “I’m going to tell you something, just promise you won’t think me fixated.”

“Fixated on what?”

“Just no fixation talk, okay? Or assumptions of such.”

“You’re the one doing any fixation talk here,” he gave her a lopsided grin, “but okay, okay, I promise, I won’t be the one initiating any such talk, but I reserve the right to engage in one if initiated by you.”

She shook her head, trying not to smile, and asked, “When you look at the waves here, what do you see?”

He paused and thought about it, “I guess I see unrealized longing - each wave reaches out as far as it can, clinging on to the sand, but the sand’s grip is weak - the way dry sand runs through our fingers, so does the wave run straight through it, through each of the myriad little holes in its surface, and the sand is losing the wave a million times over, as it percolates through the cracks of its feeble embrace. And if you listen closely, you can catch how the excited fizzling of the foam turns into sizzling-out bubbling within the sand’s сотах…”

She stared at him wide-eyed, as he shook his head and concluded his thought, “I guess if God really wanted to torment lovers, he’d turn one into the coast sand and the other into the wave desperately splashing itself on its shore.”

She took a step towards him, then lifted his hand to her face and kissed the inside of his palm.

He flipped his hand, catching hers in a soft hold, and kissed her fingers in return, “I went a little too far, didn’t I?”

She shook her head, “That was a beautiful metaphor, even if a little sad.” She wrinkled her nose with a half suppressed smile, “How are you not a writer?”

“You get to hear all of my random rumbling and blubbering. And since you’re the only audience I could ever care about, I don’t find any further need to write.”

She shook her head again, in amusement.

They stood silently, looking at the ocean. Then, as if just remembering something, he smiled, “I take it that wasn’t what you had in mind when you asked me about the waves?”

She giggled, “It so wasn’t!” Then she pulled his hand in an invitation to continue walking. He didn’t follow just yet. Instead, squeezing her hand tightly to pull her to a stop, he asked, “And?”

She looked at him over her shoulder, smiling in her reluctance, then nodded at the receding foam under their feet, “I was just going to say that the way the wave recedes with the foam tracing after it - it looks like a long trace of a bride’s veil. Ocean is a bride, but not to sand - wind is her groom.”

“Ah, it’s the wind, huh?”

She looked at him coyly and gave a pointed side eye to the wind “ripples” on the sand, “To be honest, from the looks of it, the wind and the sand might be engaged as well.” At that moment, her hair flew chaotically around her face and she laughed, “This wind is quite insatiable - look, now it’s flirting with me!”

He pulled her closer and lifted her, spinning around, carefully as to not topple an older couple behind them. As he put her back on her feet, he whispered into her hair, “You won’t get this one, hear me, wind?”

A raspy voice croaked behind them, “Kids these days! Spewing such nonsense - don’t they know the sand is born of the ocean? It couldn’t possibly be both its offspring and its lover!”

They paused, trying to not burst out laughing, then slowly turned to look at the speaker.

An old woman was looking at them, shaking her head in mild annoyance, which looked a lot like well-hidden mischief, as an older man hugged her with one arm and said laughing, “Oh dear…”

P.S. The image is from my illustrated poetry book “Ode to Hope and Despair.”