home with the sea

'The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it...' Virginia Woolf whispers to me, soft and sage. And as she breathes these elegant hand written lines to me, my pallid eyes fill with warm tears. My  lashes hold on to them, unwilling to let them fall away, but I blink and tears run down gaunt cheeks and drop on to her words. Ink spatters on her pages as I ache for the sea; my home. I see the waves reaching up onto the shore, clinging as long as they can, and finally letting go. I smell and feel the salt, the sprinkles of ocean on my sun-burnt face. I feel my mother's soft hair, fluttering in the wind and brushing against my briny skin. I close my eyes and hear the gentle hush of waves, and the ceaseless, calming sounds of the sea echoes and pervade my sense. The waves whisper to me, 'Linger, you are at home,' and as I turn to go they crash against me and try to pull me back. I feel not at home, not at home with the sea and the ones I love. Woolf whispers to me, and I become lost in words and imagine I am with the sea. 

photo by jon estwards