riptide
when i think about falling in love, i think about that day at the beach. for once, i am not in love with anyone at all, comfortably between embarrassments. we are on the northern coast of sicily, some tiny town whose name i could not conjure if you put a knife to my throat, and even if that worked, i’d butcher the pronunciation (and then, presumably, a murderer with a kink for romance languages would butcher me). we’re the only out-of-towners for miles, pastily out of place, but the locals don’t mind us intruding, and we’re left in peace to slather SPF 50+ on our sweat-dampened skins.
my friend KC does not want to swim — bad experience as a kid. i get it. my mother is the same. long before i was born, a near-drowning in montauk scared the sea out of her forever. we rarely got near it, and when we did, my sister and i were barely allowed to wade past our shins. now, as an adult, i seize every chance to venture out as far as i want. even out of practice, i’m a good swimmer, and have always been fearless.
i wander in. the water is so refreshing it feels holy; the sheer pleasure of it makes my teeth chatter. i flip onto my back and let the sun singe my face, buoyed by salt and giddiness, playing mermaids by myself. besides my friend back on shore, nobody knows where i am right now. the freedom is heady. i could swallow the sky.
plenty of people are enjoying it with me. occasionally i’m blessed with a buon giorno, which is all i’m capable of volleying back. an older woman asks a followup i don’t understand; all i can muster is “acqua…bellissima”. she throws her head back and laughs, not unkindly, as she paddles away. it looks like she hasn’t seen shade in about forty years. she might be the happiest person alive. today i am in the company of people who know how to live well, and i don’t even feel like an impostor.
i float on. for once, the passage of time is none of my business. whenever i remember, i let a foot drift down to brush against the sand. if i chose, i could stop floating, root my feet back into the ground. i can still stand; i am still safe.
going from safe to not safe is a very fine line that often gets crossed without you realizing. you can’t always pinpoint which drink did you in last night, that corner you shouldn’t have turned down, the moment you began caring for someone enough that losing them would wound you. you were safe and then you weren’t.
the next time my foot drifts down, it touches nothing, and my body jolts in surprise. still unworried, i swing my arms above my head, propel myself underwater and down a bit, then again, a bit further — nothing.
when i resurface i realize everyone is very far away. i’m the furthest out by far. it isn’t until i start to swim back that i notice the undertow. i’ve stood to my ankles in stormy waters, felt how they can suck the weight out from under you, but this is the strongest i’ve ever felt under a sunny sky.
the shoreline does not approach as quickly as it should. i fall into freestyle: face down, legs fluttering, arms pumping. it’s not working. when i turn to breathe, i inhale liquid salt instead.
now i am choking, but not enough to distract me from the humiliation. how am i the only one out here? did everyone else feel it coming? do all the [indeterminate sicilian town] locals know what time the current comes? why did no one tell me?
my strokes become erratic. it’s the panic that gets you. it steals your breath, wastes it on things you can’t even use. the harder you fight it, the quicker it comes. this is what happened to my mother, i realize, remembering her relaying the spirals of her mind as she began to drown. two to three minutes to lose consciousness; five to ten for the rest.
death and i are not well-acquainted, but we’ve passed each other on the street. we’ve had a few run-ins — always sudden, sometimes violent, usually bloodless. it’s partly why i’m on this beach: after a flurry of bullets missed me by inches, i fled my gun-hungry homeland for italy, where that violence is more politely gatekept. all to say, i know what it feels like. i know how hard the heart can beat once it realizes it almost stopped.
it’s with this kind of heart that i crawl my way up the sand, after an amniotic burst of a wave finally floods me gasping back to shore. wet pebbles lodge beneath my fingernails as the water laps around me. i press the heel of my hand down, watch its fossil fill with water, allow myself to be kissed by the thing that nearly killed me.
fearlessness, i realize, is not the same as bravery. i’d just never let myself get far enough to know i should be afraid. the absence of fear means nothing. it’s so easy, pretending to be brave when nothing has happened to you yet.
the wind is already spiraling my hair dry. the sun seals the salt into my skin. later we will drive home through wildfire smoke. a few days from now, it will get so hot here that snails will cook to death in their shells.
once my legs stop shaking enough to stand, i make my way back to KC. she drops the book from in front of her face, squints up with a smile. “how was it?”
deep in my chest, a miner hammers away in haste, trying to excavate some precious gem before the walls of the cave crumble into a tomb. “bellissima.”
three years later, i will bike along the coast of portugal. this time i’ll be there for a purpose, not just to outrun myself, though grief and fear will still be nipping at my heels (for new and terrible reasons, i’d like to tell myself; never any of the things we were actually worried about). the air will be thick with salt, slicing through my lungs.
there will be a beach i like better than the others. i’ll squish the bike’s tires into the sand, prop the handlebars up against a rocky cliffside. i will strip down to my swimsuit and run headlong into the sea until i remember, stopping myself once i’ve splashed up to my shins. the current will tear the sand away from my feet, a new record for the strongest tide i’ve ever felt. the waves will crest too high for something so close to shore. they will beckon me in, one step, then another, until — BAM — one will explode directly onto my body with mathematical precision. it will hurl me back, airborne, skidding me onto the sand. the wind will be knocked out of me. it will feel like getting bitch slapped by Poseidon but i will laugh, and cough, and smear sand out of my eyes and into my hair. i was being safe! i was careful and it hurt me anyway.
you think know what it will feel like and you won’t. how could you, when you never step in the same sea twice? when water rises where it wasn’t meant to go? even if you run from it, seal yourself off in some cave, one day you will wake with wet ankles and remember, too late, that people still drown in caves.
love, water, death — it will find you wherever you are. all you can do is meet it well.