Nic Narrates

This morning, I stood on the edge. I stood and looked up, gazing for a while at the pale pink and gray sky; wisps of cloud blocking the spreading sunlight as it filtered through the treetops lining the lake across the street, across the harbor and breakwater.

There was a faint coolness in the air as I slipped my sandals off and stepped, pensively, onto the fenced-in and manicured grass; barefooted and in want of a pedicure. The grass was slick beneath my toes from the overnight rains. And the locust tree branches overhead sprinkled their storm remnants upon my shoulders where I stood.

Seagulls and other such birds were drown out by the rush of the morning city traffic as cars and trucks and motorcycles splashed through the burdensome puddles. I closed my eyes and listened. And remembered.

I remembered a place and a morning, not unlike this one, though far away both in time and distance. I remembered the sunrise spot. That beach. Those waves. The cluster of palm trees. Coarse sand. And there was this same pale, pastel sky. Same coolness of air before the day’s heat.

That place only exists now in my memory; torn down to make way for a modern and posher resort for other travelers to marvel at other sunrises. My “happy place” no longer. Twice I stood upon that sand and that beach before it slipped away.

This morning, I stood on the edge of a memory and returned.

Filed under: a thing of beauty, city encounters, hooray for sunshine, in memory, just say 'when', wanderlust by Nic