Where I Belong Rachel

Where I Belong

            I can feel the sand sticking to my skin as I burrow my feet in its small dunes.  The heat penetrates my tender feet. A breeze ruffles by, tickling my face and breathing on my legs.  I look ahead; my eyes take in the beauty of the rolling blue/green waves, capped with white suds.  I close my eyes and breathe deeply.  A fresh sea salt smell fills my nose, mixed with the smell of a barbeque from a condo nearby.  The sun beats down mercilessly on my sun-screened bathed face and arms.  I slip my green shades on my head and the world goes dark, but I can still hear the ocean, and feel the sun, and smell the barbeque next door.  I flip out my towel before me and lie on my stomach.  My eyes droop lazily and I watch an intense game of volleyball to my right.  I loose the battle with my eyelids as sleep pulls me to another world.  The roaring of the ocean becomes a gentle humming sound and the hot sun becomes an enveloping blanket that surrounds me.

            When I awaken later my warm blanket is gone.  The sun has turned an orange-ish red hue and is melting into the sky.  I watch as the ball of fire touches the dark water in the distance.  It casts a beautiful light a across the ocean.  Then, it slips further and further down and is gone.  An evening chill arises and raises goose bumps on my flesh.  I pull a sweater out and lift it over my sunburned skin.  However, the cold slips under my sweater and runs an icy finger down my back.  Someone walks on my grave and I shiver.  I pick up my towel and walk back toward my condo.  The sand feels cool and fine under my feet.  It is a refreshing feeling after the unpleasant touch of burning sand earlier.

            Something flashes in my peripheral vision.  I turn and see a light.  It is a bonfire.  The flames lick the wood hungrily and shoot up into the fast approaching darkness.  I decide to stay.

            Darkness appears as quickly as light left.  It is cold but the fire feels good on my hands.  The moon peeks through the black sky and stars twinkle nervously.  The longer I stay the blacker the sky gets, and brighter the stars and moon become.  The wink at me, the stars.  I smile back.  The night is beautiful and so vastly different from the day.  The sun controls the day but shadows hang around.  But the darkness owns the night while light slips through the black curtain shrouding the world.  I inhale the smell of sea salt and brine.  This is where I belong, with my toes burrowing in the sand and my nose drinking in the mingling smells.  I belong out on the coast, with the sea wind running through my hair.

Rachel Adams                     November 2012