the softest sand

Closed my eyes, for a moment, imagined some years back on the beach, living there, sun burning through my eyelids, water washing into sand, barefeet, jeans rolled up, sand in every nook and cranny. I hear the faint noise of children playing in water, splashing in the distant, sandcastles being made, they will fall to the tide soon enough. Walked to this spot a million times, a million years ago, flat streets, straight shot. Palm trees are making sounds like metal blinds closing on a window.

I have this notebook in my hand, and i've scribbled every thought on it. There is sand in between pages, and everywhere. I make little holes with my feet, feel the water fill them up, then the suction plant my feet to the ground. Back then it felt like the only foundation I had. Funny how we look for rocks to rest on, and sometimes all we can find is sand.

And then I go farther back, further in to a picture I have of me as a child, pale, blonde, smiling, my dad is holding me on the beach, his hair so long for the longest time I thought it was my mom. You can't see his face, he is staring at me. It's my first time at the beach, I am a baby and I look so happy. All the struggles and scars and scrapes and loves and failures and successes so far ahead of me. I was just there, existing, water running over small feet and baby toes. I wish I could remember that picture, instead of only having a copy of a third party memory.

the last memory of the beach: boat in the distance, almost slipping off the horizon, sun is burning down behind it, almost catching that boat on fire it seems. Friends around me, I walk down the beach by myself, feeling the sand shift and sigh with every step. I bend down, touch the water, it's always colder than I think it will be, but I don't mind it much anymore. The world seems colder all the time, and people talk of global warming?

Why does the beach, seeing the ocean, all those visuals just put us at awe? To think that most of the earth is water and somehow the waves are held back, somehow I am not capsized everyday. We look for miracles and signs and great and tremendous things all the time, for untouched fleeces and burning bushes, but miracles are everywhere. In the eyes of someone, their little worlds for eyes, the lines in their skin, their crows feet and furrowed eyebrows. Miracles are in the smiles of little children and in old people kissing each other's cheeks. There are signs in the waves when the tides change, not swallowing us whole and erasing us from existence.

So with my eyes closed I see the ocean and the sand, feel the softest sand between my toes, hear the water crashing, the children playing. I open my eyes to an apartment that should be warmer than it is, with a dog making puppy dog eyes at me and a tv telling me to do something that I do not want to do.

But there are miracles even here, in the calmness of a once wild animal. And I am not talking about the dog.