My Love Letter to the Sea

 

Simone Chalkley: I don’t believe in heaven, but if I did I think it would look like this.

When I stand on your shore, it’s as if time itself stands still but ages pass. I remain motionless, yet I’m moving. As your waves stroke my feet with your cool, bubbling liquid and you drag the sand from underneath me, I drift sideways. I feel a giddy swirl in my head. If I close my eyes, I almost topple, yet if I flick them open to regain my bearings, I haven’t moved anywhere at all. How do you do that? I love your trickery.

At every beach, you sort sand from stone, small pebbles from large, stone from shell, smashing some but preserving others. I marvel at how you do this without eyes or hands. Plastic wasn’t part of your plan. I’m sorry. Some of us are trying to resolve that. Each of your beaches differ, but your horizons look the same. 

Nothing is like you, sea. The never-ending back and forth, to and fro, ebb and flow of waves gently lapping or wildly crashing. Your temper is your own. For four billion years, you have controlled your own destiny and the destiny of almost everything you touch and everything within you. All powerful, you wipe out civilisations in seconds. Swirling and eddying, batting and wrecking, your secrets are beneath your surface. Your deepest, darkest canyons are nearer to me than the farthest reaches of space, unexplored: a mystery. You’re a blanket for blue whales, eyeless alien creatures with dangling lights, or blobs and jelly and spikes, from rainbow to albino to opaque, gargantuan to microscopic. No wonder there are such tall tales about you, with your sirens and sea monsters. We know so little about you, it’s probably all true. I’d like it to be.

You inspire me. You carve rivulets and grooves into million-year-old mountains when your children make their way back home after an adventure as a cloud, the eternal circle. I am part of you. We are all part of you. Every drop of water that we use, that we see, is part of this same cycle. Is that why I feel so connected to you? I am 60 per cent water and you cover 70 per cent of the earth. That’s rather a lot between us. Hey, come on, sea, I’m looking for similarities here! Maybe, just maybe, if a drop of your water is in me, I can somehow acquire a little of your immense knowledge, your strength, your power. When I am in you, I give myself up to you, your whims. I know once I’m up to my neck, I am powerless, but once I leave, I feel whole and strong and rejuvenated.

When life seems overwhelming, relentless, and unforgiving. When I need answers to the incomprehensible, I feel the urge to be beside you. To stand and stare across your vast expanse, so that everything feels small and insignificant in comparison, myself included. This is why I come to you, sea. To expand my horizons, especially when I can’t see past the end of my own nose, which is more often than I’d care to admit. 

Simone Chalkley