By the Ocean

She watches the waves and thinks, I don’t belong here. And she doesn’t. She’s a city girl, or a mountain girl, but not this. Not the obtrusive exhalations of the sea, the salty spray or the writhing foam. No, she’s not made of heat and summer and smiles. She’s born from freshly fallen snow and grimy subway stations, from the whispers between the branches of the trees that never die and ruts in city streets. She longs to be free, but not like this. Not here, not now. Oh, no, she didn’t arrive here to feel the dirty sand squelch between her toes, to feel the wrongness in her body of the crashing of the waves. She’s not meant to feel the humid air press against her skin, her eyes, her mouth. She knows that her bones ache for the Rocky Mountains, for snow days and bus passes and Subarus and wildflowers. She can’t hear herself think over the ocean. With each swell she feels tightness in her chest, a longing, a pining, an aching for home. There’s nothing for her, even if everything was here. She knows where she comes from and that that’s who she is- everything she is. If she didn’t have that, she wouldn’t exist. And now she’s absolutely sure of it.