The Possibilities

“She dove into the ocean for them.”   That’s what I said when they asked for an explanation.  The cop looked at me like I was fresh. 

“You kidding, kid?” he asked.  I just shook my head, waiting for him to speak again so I could watch his upper lip shiver under his moustache.  

Instead, he just licked his front teeth, top first, then the bottom.  I imagined his tongue probing the cracks and crevices, just like him.  Searching for forgotten details, for relics of what had been there earlier.  It would be rough and brusque, like him, coarse like the sand we stood on and slippery like the ocean behind us.

He turned and moved along the beach without so much as a good-bye or thank-you.  I couldn’t help staring at his feet as the sand filtered beneath his shoes, slowing his progress. 

In the end, the ocean lured me back.  Salty fingers gripped my face and the waves sighed in my ears.  I longed to see my shadow lengthen into the water, piercing the foam but always above the darkness that frightened me.

I stood at the brim, just close enough to tempt the water to caress my toes, and raised my hands above my head.  Palms together, I stretched my arms toward heaven, a profane promise that I never intended to fulfill. 

I would never dive in.  I couldn’t lose myself out there in the deep, like she did.  Maybe it was my fear that cemented me to sanity.  Maybe I was rooted too firmly to the ground to let go and drift freely on the whim of the waves. 

Sometimes, when I stand at the edge of the water, I see her face reflected in the ocean.  I hear her laugh drift along the coast and she whispers to me.  “Let go,” she says.  But her voice is hollow and I don’t trust it any more. 

I can still clearly remember her right before she disappeared forever.  The breeze behind her lifted her hair toward the water and toward the sky.  “I have to go,” she said so softly, I wasn’t sure if she had really spoken at all.  But when I looked in her eyes, I knew.  They were the color of the ocean already.  Her heart was already a thousand miles on the waves; she was only still standing there to say good-bye to me. 

“Wait!”  I called out.

She turned and her liquid eyes almost melted me.  She was the moon and she was pulling me with her, so I had to look away. 

“What’s out there?”  I asked.  It was more like a wail, a distraction, something to keep her there for just a moment longer.

She raised her hands into a point like a prism over her head and her voice rang clear across the water.  “My dreams,” she said.  And she dove into the ocean for them.