By Viviana Sanchez, TIWP Student

Everything you’ve ever known

Belongs to the water

And back to the water it will go

eventually

Because our bodies are never really ours

And our knowledge is never really ours to keep

It belongs to the sea

To the saltiness, to the sand

To the tide, to the shore

We simply take and after we are buried, we return

We live on borrowed knowledge, in borrowed bodies

You float upon the briny waves and feel the water churn

You are sad but, maybe you just need to go back to the sea

You must lie with the shells and be with the oysters

To truly be happy, the salt must be in your hair and on your teeth

You must return to the ocean, a little bit

You must give the ocean a part of your mind, your sadness, which it will happily take

To truly be happy, you must not fight where we eventually go

Instead lie on your back with limp hands

feel the forming waves rushed under you and with you, cold and strong and salty

Breathe deep, the water isn’t trying to hurt you

Beneath you are algae covered stones, darting gray fish, stray bits of swaying kelp

Notice the white clouds above and the color of the sky

Feel the sun on your skin, feel the ocean under you, feel part of the icy water rush across your stomach and chest and neck

Taste the salt on your lips, feel the swaying of your hair, give in to the rise and fall of the growing waves the move swiftly underneath you

Feel the world around you, feel the safe and the calm

Feel the salt and the sea

Only then can the water reclaim your sadness

Only then can you really know and feel that one day, someday you will go back

To the sea