Sea and Me

Tropical birds chime question marks through a gushing rainstorm. A stream of rainwater is bumped out in tiny steps down the trunk of a young palm tree. After a clearing breeze causes the fronds to sway into each other, click-clacking. I think of Palm Sunday and bringing home the long green spikes from church. Dad would always tie the fronds in a knot and leave them on the high buffet table which I always thought was a weird metaphorical juxtaposition – tying the blessing in a knot and putting them in a place of display to yellow untouched all year. I remember wondering: where did all these palm fronds come from? Who gathers and wraps and ships? Sitting in this place, I watch groundskeepers rake the leafy debris. So of course, it is the priest that makes the magic happen and it is the congregant that consumes the magic and calls it holy. We've assigned all the glory and the blame ourselves.

Besides everywhere, where are you? I throw myself out into the roar of an unbounded sea, asking. The sea and me. Winter solstice on the equator. Full moon. Meteors showering over the black pulse of my Caribbean. Sea and me.

My feet feel each granular touch of innumerable sands. Step – sink – step. To kneel at this kind of blue is to leave the body. I'm always leaving the body, especially under the force of the sea and me.

How many times have I finished this name? Where are you? Sea and me.