And you were out to sea. You had the sail open and the oar in your arms and the water was as clear and clean as a shirt on a line in the early morning.
There was a touch of blue in the sky, a small warning, in the tiny right corner of your horizon but you ignored it, eager to get into the sea. And then the blue deepened and spread across the sky like an eye, an angry eye and the sky began to rumble and the rain began to fall and the boat was swaying and you kept saying you had it under control, you had it under control. And you rowed, you rowed hard until it felt like your arms would break and fall off and float in the water to be washed up like branches on the shore. You didn’t have it under control, but it was better to tell yourself that, because it was the only thing holding yourself together, the only piece of rope to which you could bind yourself to to stop from drowning. And the waves were so heavy, so heavy, the storm so bitter and you were right in the middle of it and no matter how tight you closed your eyes and how hard you tried to row, it seemed like it was all over.
And you would never, ever be able to reach that calm blue sea on a summer’s day. And you had tried hard. God knows you tried. God knows how much you wanted to sail across that blue sea.
