Water's edge

The water’s edge is a strange place to be in the midst of the storm. I can feel the wind rising, but its call is but an echo in my ears. The rain has been battering against the window panes, but even that is only the sound of chimes in the air. My thoughts are louder, now, than all that is around me. I do not wish to go back. There is an escape within these waves. The storm is brewing, but I am still here. It cannot move me.

My eyes are closed, but my other senses tell me all that happens around me. The chill of the rain as it caresses my skin, the cold water that hugs my feet, the wind that bites the warmth out of me with a brutality that seeks to cause pain. The ebb, the flow, the howl, it is all but music, orchestrated like chaos. The scent and taste of salt in my hair and on my lips, draw memories into my vision. I can’t tell which ones I’d want to let go of, even if I could.

There is nowhere I have felt safer, and yet, there is nowhere more dangerous that I have been to as yet. My strength fades. I fall to the ground. There is no part of me that is not soaked to the bone, as the sea smiles in victory.  And yet, it is in the darkness of the storm, that I feel the most empowered. It is in the riot of the wind that the calm surrounds me.  

And it is amidst this assault on my senses that I feel his arms around me. I do not need to be in control. Relief washes over me as I realize that he’s found me. The storm rages ever more so, but it cannot tell whether my tears are my own or that of the rain. But I am safe as I hear him whispering in my ear, ‘I’ll always be here.’