Steps

– He stands still on the stone outlying into the sea. The wind blows and crashes against the jagged edges. The water clashes against itself, as waves rebound and droplets are dispersed and spread out but never escape the space of the breath of salted humidity. The droplets soar in the somersault of exasperation, but are further muted by the force of gravity and collapse as they reenter the oceanic body. Seagulls cry out their presence, becoming moving shades to the sun. Ancillary, shelter from the light, never permanent. He stands there, still, still on the great rocks which overlook the ocean and its incessant movement; its restless and unsettled desire to caress each grain, each stone, the rotting wood of each pier. He breathes in the ocean, in each breath. He can feel wave after wave crashing on him as the wind breaks by the cracks of the stones upon which he stands. Yet still he is unmoved and unsure, but certain nonetheless that he is not standing in the moment he has been searching for. He is not come upon that moment which he has longed for in the decades of his life. And they are decades. At this point, as he stands there, assaulted, yet unmoved by either wave or water, neither wind nor ocean, he has behind him two decades of searching. He has traveled from point to point on his limited map, bouncing about the limits of his city and past into the limits of those surrounding. He has driven in the darkness of night, being accompanied by nothing more than lost headlights which traverse their course and disappear, after having become the closest thing to the sun he’s experienced on those long dark drives through the arteries of the state. He has stood at the edge of roads, of counties, of ledges and bridges, and myriad dreams, but has yet to find the moment he has sought. Still, he believes it is real, can be real, can be found. He stands there, still, still and still staring into the clash and crash of everything. And as he stands he contemplates six thousand breaths, six thousand heart beats, six thousand steps and wonders what six thousand miles transforms.