I never would have thought there would be this many,
a whole horizon sprinkled with them,
diamonds and rubies strewn across the invisible line
where the blackness of the sea meets the blackness of the sky,
the wind turbines putting on a light show just for us,
pinpricks calling across the expanse,
each one the dot of a question mark:
What’s out there?
The headland glows orange and distant to our left,
it too seems to be calling:
You know you want to know what lies on my other side.
I do, but I’m happy here,
on the beach with my sister,
heads buzzing from the eight pound rounds,
talking the kind of profound nonsense
only the inebriated can,
here in the dark atop the sandy steps,
in between mouthfuls of impulse-bought pizza,
I tell her things-
I tell her that coming here makes me forget
about my adult status and employment history,
colleagues and students, bank statements and bills,
past hurts and the people who inflicted them,
they have all receded, faded to faraway specks
like the lights out to sea,
I tell her that coming here makes me refocus,
readjust the lens through which I view life,
I tell her that if you want a place to really belong to you,
you have to go back to it in the dark,
you have to see its other face,
show it you are not afraid and claim it as your own,
she is one of the few I can trust to understand,
even through the fog of the eight pound rounds,
I don’t tell her this sea is the closest thing I have
to holy water…
