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Are Those Waves?

When you are small and go out with your uncle, he buys himself cigarettes and he buys you a comic book. You sit on the sea wall, you don’t read, instead you watch as the smoke escapes from his beard and prettily drifts across the bay. He keeps talking so that you don’t run down to the beach and come home wet, with salt marks on your nice shoes, and sand in your pants… again. So you watch for the seventh wave.

Time passes, you smoke cigarettes and buy your own comic books. You live overlooking a grey channel and the sea hammers on the beach like hail. How many times did you lose your heart? How many times was it broken? You get very wet.

More time; you grow golden and move to the huge blue ocean. You learn to surf. Somebody loves you back and daily the waves buoy you up and batter you down; somehow you survive.

Time moves again; you grow children and live together on an island. Sometimes the straits are so rough that the ferries do not run for weeks. It feels safe this way, nothing can sneak up on your precious family while the sea defends you.

The day comes you are living far inland. Your life is no longer shaped by the tides. You look out of an aircraft window, far down below is another ocean. Are those waves?

 

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