SeanWard.org

When I first met the sea, I ran to it, my initial steps awkward, then welcoming, like those of a foal. I chased morning’s tide, then waited, fleeing as it swung back for me, and later, I let it wash over my ankles, pushing me gently into the cool mud and foam underfoot. Those were days full of the sway of playground swings, nights brimming with the deepness of sleep and rhythmic dreams. I often dreamt of a bridge into the sky, as if it had an edge, innocent enough to believe that boundaries were well defined, naive enough not to recognize those that were.

When I first men Jenn, I left the sea. I left the battleship grey hulls, the teakwood decks. I left flocks of screaming, diving gulls. I left waves that crashed over the rails in monsoons. I left icebergs calving from Portage Glacier. I left the cold black waters past the Aleutians. I left the foreign look of Northern sky, its yellow tint hovering over green fields and dachas past the starboard quarter in the Sea of Okhotsk. I left the Pacific Ocean, I left my ship, and I married Jenn. Not long afterwards, she was pregnant.

I paced and smoked, paced and smoked, preferring the grey of the sky to the flat white of the room, the peaceful way the smoke rode the currents in the air and ascended, like sea-bladders, or blubbers, graceful jelly creatures. Occasionally, someone in a lab coat or green scrubs would pass through the door and join me, but they never spoke, perhaps not knowing why I was there, perhaps not wanting to know.

Jenn had been in labor for hours. I repeatedly excused myself from the room, excused myself from the pain which moaned from her in short bursts, building in intensity as her contractions increased their frequency. The nurse kept entering, kept promising, It won’t be long now. I prayed that were true, that a gurney would appear and carry her to the delivery room. I excused myself each time the nurse left, for one last pull to the lungs, one last look at the sky.

I paced and smoked, paced and smoked, then leaned over the second floor rail, even with the horizon. I let the fog drift hot from the back of my throat and out, rising slow in the cool air. When I angered, I could scream at the ocean, her response was always the same, comforting. I told her my innermost secrets, she shared them quietly, and only with me. And when I needed to be held, she rocked me to sleep, shifting the center of gravity, fifteen degrees at a time.