First, there’s a wall of impenetrable heat, coming at me from behind, but for some reason, it hits my feet first like the tide from the ocean. Where it’s only really touching one tiny part of your body but it feels as if its everywhere; that sort of infinity only an ocean can project, you know? Suddenly, I realize I am at the ocean, and everything smells like salt.

Then I look to my left, to my right, down the shore and it looks like the beaches I remember from when I was a kid. Rhode Island kind of beaches, Maine kind of beaches. Small pockets of calm sand and then angry piles of rocks jutting upwards, creating the illusion of a gate, endless microcosms that ring the world. The sky is a deep, sacred gray, and although I don’t look behind me, I know the ancient New England beach houses are peeking out from a curtain of fog. I feel ageless; I’m not a child, not a woman, I’m just me and I’m there, the same me that existed during that vacation in Maine, the same me that now walks through Paris, searching. I feel bound by no structure of time; I’m not waiting, I’m not conscious of a waking reality. I simply am.

And I’m standing there, breathing deeply, eyes wide open, arms stretched out in 45 degree angles from my body, and I can feel the mist from the tide rising up, meeting my skin, meeting of our own accord. We know what we are, and what we are doing, the sea and I.

I begin to move my feet, walking towards the rocky gate on my right. The boulders, mashed in a conglomeration of natural angles and uncertain balance, create a walkway towards the sea, and at the end, there is someone sitting. Their knees are drawn up, and their arms hug their legs, as if afraid that if given free reign, their limbs would decide to disobey. There is no fear in their stature, just containment. The pads of my feet greet moss, shell, and as I approach the end, the rocks become slippery with the sea’s mist, rising up from the crashing surf on all sides. The boulders become less stable, and by the time I can see the details of the young girl’s form, I’m half climbing, half walking.

When I’m right behind her, I can hear her humming; a simple, clear, gentle melody.

This is when I begin to feel conscious of the fact that I don’t know what to say, or what to do next. But before I can dwell on it for long, she turns to face me, and I am suddenly very sure of what to do, so I sit next to her. I never take my eyes off of her face, though she has returned to looking forward, into the fog.  Her skin, her eyes, her hair; all of it from the ocean, not in composition, but she’s shades of blue and grey and electric all at once. But it doesn’t look strange, not inhuman, but in harmony with our surroundings. She’s in that in between stage, a Lolita, a nymph, caught between childhood and adolescence. Where the hips are too narrow but there’s this hint of curve that ever so subtle, this tiny ghostly period when the windows make halos and the body hugs the mind.

And she turns to me, framed in a mane of wild, tousled curls. She speaks in the way that one recites a fair tale, with a sweeping, pedagogical melody:

drip

drip

drop

never is

oh well

cheeky rain

hard up

stir crazy

tick

tick

tock


Glowing, her face is alight with an impish grin, and I reach out and touch her hand, skin on skin, resting on stone, because I simply must touch this creature, to understand what she means. Her other hand reaches across and rests on the top, and she’s watching my face as if I am her child. A vision of eternity, of roots and of rivers of blood through generations. When she speaks this time, it’s breathless, pushed through her as if she cannot hold it in anymore.


I have my doubts about disbelief


And it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. We move towards eachother, two foreheads touching, the symmetry of two bodies touching, like little girls telling a story. Toes to toes, knees to knees, hands over each other’s shoulders, forehead to forehead, eyes to eyes. We’re saturated, our hair made of ocean and sand, mist coating arms.


And then I wake up in bed, coated in my own sweat, laughing.


drip

drip

drop

never is

oh well

cheeky rain

hard up

stir crazy

tick

tick

tock



And I go downstairs and see my mother, sipping her coffee, and before I can stop it words come rolling from my lips, her words, and I’m laughing, laughing!



I have my doubts about disbelief.


-Kate Grasso


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