flash fiction – Page 3 – Picking Up Roots

Breakers

He wanted to walk closer to the water where the sand was firm and cooler. He wanted to feel the bite of the early-spring Atlantic as the occasional wave washed over his naked feet.

She preferred the looser sands further up from the waterline. She was cold. The wind tore through the thin jacket she wore. Looking at the icy blue of the ocean made her shiver.

He looked up at her as the wind caught her hair, pushing it in disheveled waves across her face. She was beautiful. Still. Always. Forever. Time would never steal that from his eyes.

The sun glistened across the water and she had to squint to make out his shape. She saw more the motion – his long strides – than anything else. She thought he was crazy to be out there in shorts, feet getting washed over by the foamy water. She shivered again.

He felt the peace washing over him. The cold water sharpened his senses, but the simple act of being by the water washed away all the cares weighing him down.

She didn’t hate it here. She loved the ocean. She just didn’t like the cold. It was too early to be here. She hadn’t said as much, she knew he needed this. Still…she couldn’t help feeling.

He felt light. He watched the gulls soar upon the wind and envied their freedom. He thought about what waited at home.

She looked down at him. Saw he was up to his knees now, his legs never leaving the water. He was an idiot. It was too cold. She loved him anyway. That would never change.

He didn’t feel the water. He felt nothing. He drifted further toward the sun.

She looked for him again. He was gone. Her scream drowned in the wind.

Clean

The wind howled from the northwest adding white caps to the placid waves of the bay as the sky darkened.

“It’s going to rain hard,” said Gram, who felt the storms in her bones an hour or two before they hit, “I’d say you still have an hour or so before it gets here, but you should start bringing in anything you don’t want to get wet.”

“Okay.”

I’d come up to see her on a whim. I needed to get away and the cottage was the best place for that. No one who knew about what had happened knew where it was. I’d turned my phone off when I hit the state line, so they wouldn’t be able to call either.

It wasn’t the biggest mistake of my life, but it was close. As Gram said when I told her about it, no one had died, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened and that a few people hadn’t been hurt. Gram had offered that “aches and pains are part of life, whether they are of the body or the soul, you can’t avoid them.”

As much as those words helped, they were only a momentary balm. Hour after hour my mind played out the events over and over again. I don’t know what I would have changed. Everything had to happen the way it did. I’m not proud of it, it just…there wasn’t another way.

“Here it comes,” Gram announced from the front windows, looking out across the bay.

I looked out and saw a wall of water coming towards us. A low rumble of thunder echoed out ahead of it. This is what I had been waiting for.

I opened the side door and stepped out onto the deck. The first drops of water slammed into my skin. I stretched my arms out wide and looked to the sky. I turned in a slow circle hoping to be cleansed.

Though she didn’t say a word, I could feel Gram’s eyes on me. I knew there was no judgement. Just love. That’s what I needed. That’s why I’d come.

Soaked to the bone, I went down to the water’s edge. Gram always said salt water healed everything. I lay down in the water, hoping my wounds had been washed clean by the rain and that the salt would now do its part.

Breaking

She saw broken things.

She saw the rundown houses of her neighborhood, all in desperate need of nails and fresh coats of paint. She saw the beat up cars traveling the streets, their dents and mismatched panels speaking of hard driven miles.

She saw the naked flesh of trees split open by ever more powerful storms. She saw the dead leaves of the fall massed in paper bags set for destruction. She saw the waves smashing against the impenetrable rocks on the coast.

She saw the cracks in the human heart, the thousand fault lines of lives lived to the limits of ability. She saw the tear-stained cheeks of loss. She saw the pain of this life hidden deep beneath the false brightness of tired eyes. She saw the hidden scars of old injuries.

She saw the shattered souls of those who had loved, been broken by that love and loved again. She knew they had no choice but to keep on.

She saw these breakages because she lived them. She was determined to experience life at its fullest and understood – from having seen – that it would involve the pain of continuous breaking.

She had broken hearts herself, snapped twigs, cut grass. She had broken egg shells. She had been in accidents. It was all part of living.

She recorded it all – brought it to life on the page – brought those pages to the world to let us know we were not alone. She understood the loneliness of breaking. She hoped her words might help ease some of our pain.

What was broken was beautiful if you looked at it in a different light – through a larger lens. She tried to bring that to the world – a small sense of wonder.

They say the effort was what broke her.