WATER / THE PAINTER

FICTION

Standing alone, facing the ocean, I remove my clothes.

It is overcast, almost storming, but not quite.

The air is cold. But not in a horrible way.

The grey-blue sand, ocean, and sky appear before me in thick swipes and in a hazy fog that makes me feel as though I am in a painting.

I lay my arms at my side so that they hold the curve of my hips. I feel them.

Maybe I am.

I feel at peace, not sure whether I am doing harm or good by taking my first step toward the water.

I take another, and my body moves somehow at once fluidly and stockily towards the point where the sand meets the water. Like a woman in a painting and one on this earth.

I’ve always thought that walking into the ocean would be a bit easier than it really is. It ought to be.

I long for a quick encompassing of my body into the waves. A full but safe overtaking by what may be considered nature over the human body, though of course the two are not discrete.

I want the rush of cold, salinized molecules to meet my skin and at once electrify and calm the muscles and bones that lay underneath. To push my hair in all directions away from my face, and to hold it there.

Instead, I push against hard water that reaches one inch, then five, then 10 high from where the sole of my foot hits the shallow, seaweed-ridden ocean floor.

I am the one crashing against the waves, pushing against their course to delve deeper into and cover more of my body with the ocean.

Chest-deep in the water, I am scared of the fish below, and of what I cannot see.

Now with my head bobbing above and below water and my arms moving in steady, rhythmic circles to keep me afloat, I fear what the bottom of my feet can no longer touch.

The ocean does not suspend me or move with me as I hoped it would, but suspected it wouldn’t; it rocks my body and obscures my vision. An unforeseen wave thrusts over my face. I imagine it looks beautiful, but my nose burns an entirely unique and cruel burn. I cough up salt. I identify a craving for water, and briefly chuckle at that irony before the ocean takes my body under again, and further out to sea.

Do I drown?

.

.

.

.

No.

I swim back to shore. Lay for one minute on the sand, still alone.

I dress. A passerby walks along the boardwalk behind me. I do not expect it. And I loathe them for it.

I grab my keys. I did not know I had keys. Or at least – I wish that I didn’t, in a way.

I stand up.

I go home.