Peace

Do you remember a time when all was right in your world?  When not one whisper of discontent or worry interrupted the tranquility of your mind? 

I remember a few magic hours stolen, alone, floating in the lagoon beyond our island.  With my eyes closed, my other senses took the reigns of awareness.  Buoyant on a bed of salt water, I could feel the ocean breathing around and beneath me.  Each tiny wave pushed a little against my arms and toes, then retreated, leaving the tiny hairs in my skin standing straight up at attention.  Push, retreat, push, retreat, a gentle cadence that slowly carried me along the shore.

The water fingered my scalp.  My hair fanned itself out around my head, clumping gently at the surface.  My clothes, too, floated on their own accord, drifting away from my body in the warm water that cradled me.  The sun beat down through my eyelids, creating bright patterns of orange and pink and scarlet veins against the thin membrane.  I turned over from my back and let my feet fall.

The sand was course and clean, bits of broken shell and crushed coral bleached a brilliant white by the sun.  It puffed slightly as my toes set down, then settled again on top of my feet.  Ribbons of seaweed waved greenly in the gentle current.  Push, retreat, push, retreat.  Sinking down, I submerged myself to my neck and closed my eyes again.  Hugging my knees up to my chest, I allowed the ocean to completely take me, becoming for a few magical seconds wholly a part of that world of push and flow and gentle embrace.