When I Return

Photo by Joven Delay

It is empty here, by the bay, cold and still and dusted white with snow. But I hear you on the wind before my eyes land on your cracked shore, soaked in algae. Closer, I can see the line that never fades, a point of no return, where the crashing waves lick at amber stone that will never know the taste of your salt. The rocks beneath are black with life, shivering rockweed, broken mussels. We are far above the mess of it. So how did you get here? You, puddle of ice and water.

I have known you since I was a child. I set shaky feet on your fractured bedrock, slipped between striations down, down, until my shoes were wet with salt water. Once, I skinned my knee, running between tide pools. I fell hard–hard enough that my blood, stark against the coarse brightness of bedrock, ran far too. Do you still remember?

The ice memorizes the shape of your water; it forms concentric circles that are caught mid-swirl. Beneath this thin sheet, I know the water is already gone, but the ice remembers the receding. In time, this will either melt or break under the weight of a foot. But the rock will fill with water, and it will spin and harden and recede again. You knew me for fifteen years. I used to belong here. And though I keep leaving, my blood still rises and ebbs with your tides. I have not forgotten.