of Sunday Salt Water Summers

Water seems to be a theme that pervades my existence; in all I can say that I would not be comfortable living in a space that was not remotely close to water, preferable salt water. There is a certain serenity to the ebb and flow of the ocean, spreading it fingers into the farthest crevices, mingling with fresh water, blurring the line between the salt that defines itself, and separates it from other water. It corrodes too, sticking to it's victims even after it's wet existence has faded, as if painting what it touches and leaving a sticky reminder of its presence. Memories persist of my youth, center stage, waiting to thrust into the week from the catapult of a summer Sunday. I would saunter in a youthful lolly gag across my shore house's sharp sting gin grass, crabby as my temperament of another weekend gone. My hair would be dried to a salted matte and my skin lightly salted as lay face down on the grass, my arms wrapped in front of me, my chin safely nestled in the bend of my arms, my lips chance meeting with blonded arm salt residue; my youthful thoughts (barely 10 or 11 drifting to the approaching fall and school, how this bend in my arm might be the lips of a girl. That her lips may be salt crusted, and we may share what ever it is our adult selves are supposed to share.

I've been haunted to the sharp edge and careful decay of a weeks end. Why Sunday begins the week, I think, is to pacify those who know it really marked the last moments of rest before another eventual week of work and responsibility is to be traversed. Even in my youth their was fear and, having clarity in this fear, awareness that something was being stolen from me. What's worse, that in my youth I could not formulate even the most remote idea of this package, carefully dressed in brown thick paper, carefully folded and edged, that I possessed, that was being taken from my by some unknown assailant; I had no clue what was inside. My mother, in later years would confess to me that on Christmas Day, as the excitement of the morning had dissipated with the smoke billowing from the fire place, the smoke of the now burnt wrapping paper used to safeguard the identity of our new possessions; told me that after all my presents had been malled, there was a sadness that enveloped me, that underneath that wrapping paper, through the cardboard box, nestled below tissue paper, whatever it was I was hoping was there, was never found...that years previous I was sure what was taken from me each passing moment, each Sunday, that I might later find underneath our Christmas tree, would never be returned!