THE BEACH

I wondered, as I lay stretched out upon sand, what was it that made a sigh so calming.  A breath of air, a submission to pressures inside, and a conceding of defeat.  A sigh personified all these things, and although they may be looked at with some negative conotations, the end result was relaxation.  So I continued lying there, contemplating my sighs, letting the blowing sand stick to my damp skin.  I felt a heightened awareness of my skin, partially due to the breeze and the sea mist tantalizing my body, and also because my eyes were closed reducing the amount of stimuli I had to address. 

This lack of stimuli oppressing my mind, was it much different from a stare?  A stare where your eyes became unfocused and vision became unqualified, the type that let your mind travel without distractions down a single line of thought.  It felt the same to me that day, and although my eyes need not be closed as the sky was as empty as the dark of my eyelids, the black and red seemed to do my thoughts more justice. 

The longer I lay there, the more intensely aware I became of the ever approaching water, the tide slowly closing in on my location.  Only the largest of the waves could affect me, remind me of their presence in a cooling way.  A hand shake with the moon, an opportunity to awaken from my sigh-full slumber.  But I did not awake, I did not allow the world to break my stare into the dark oblivion of my eyelids.  No, the moon would have to conjure up more power in his lackey the sea to move me from my present state.

So I lay there, calm from my sighs, for as long as I could comfortably stand.  Until that destined final sigh where I was forced to concede defeat, not in emotion or thought, but to the methodical pushes and pulls of the ocean.  The moon had helped the it reclaim that which it had lost only hours before, that which I had only moments before possessed.  And with that last and final sigh I shook myself out of my stare, looked around me at the sea which now surrounded me completely, and slowly walked away