In Nice the buildings sway with the mistral. Winds, they blow
my hat into the sea, I chase after but cannot catch it. The
tides are too fast, my feet too slow. But balanced on the rocks
below, they scrape my heels. Surrounded by blueberry blue,
waves knock upon my toes. I let them come, whispering words
in French that only I can hear. Tu es assez, comme tu es. Twisting
them to English in my mind: “You are enough, just as you are.”
Enough, you, just as, you are.
I hear your voice among the hum and look down at
my legs, long like pencils, freckled and bare, reminding
me of humid nights, the beach, and midnight in your arms.
“You have the softest legs,” you told me at 18, sprawled
on blankets at the Jersey Shore, sand stuck to our bathing
suits in clumps. We brush it off, lay our heads on the pillows
we built for ourselves. I hold onto your words at every sound.
You smell of sunscreen, and your skin is peeling at your upper
lip. “I cannot wait to fall in love.” Your heat, it’s burning through
the time, will last forever. In loving, life eternal. Kisses infernal.
And now the stones that cut so deep, remind me of a love
and loss. Memories make my shoulders shake—blood on the
sheets, soaking through the silk, it stains. And you, left your
tears on the pillow, whisky sweat in your wake—telling me who
I’m meant to be. Tenacious. 109,000-horsepower, Wärtsilä-Sulzer
strong. But salt still flowing down my cheek, I lick it up. My
lips run dry.
Dress pulled over head, chills across my naked skin, watching
the waves as they crash to the shore, and I, I plunge myself into
the deep, dispelling reservations. With water, healing from the
outside in. I feel only the sensation of floating in the breeze.
