Ocean Spray 🌬️🌊

From email Oct 23, 2021, 3:32 AM PT

Like a dying fire, the smoldering ash belied the truth of at heart. Under it all, those heart embers still glowed pure and true, with each pulse a mournful cry out to her. After all this time and each passing breath he’d taken, it was always just to bide the time and hope to someday hear from her again. Not a coerced, misconstrued, or otherwise twisted response in any way, but an open call straight from her heart. He imagined the call of the ocean, where the sea breeze would hit the churning waves to spray a saline mist. There can be no mistaking the taste of sea salt. “Give me a love as deep as the ocean,” he once said, referencing her beautiful brown ocean eyes, knowing full well that the ocean is anything but blue. If anything is true, then the blue ocean may as well be as deep as his love for her.

Maybe he’s a fool to have held out so long, because she might have already moved on and settled her happy fortunes with the generous hand in life that fate had dealt her. Yet he persisted, like a stoic pillar of granite atop the tallest mountain against angry winds, rains, snows, and heartache. He was never a weak sauce, nor a fickle pickle. So he continued to fight to live, because he believed that to truly live, one must feel truly loved. And after having faced death and starring that sadistic asshat in the eyes, he came out physically weakened, but emotionally stronger. All the while lying under the same hospital ceiling tiles night after night, he found his thoughts always drifting back to her. He knew. He’d always known. He had asked her many times before, but she would always return a muted, “Someday.” So he worried that maybe it was she who didn’t know. Deep within his heart, under those depressing ceiling tiles, he reaffirmed to his heart of hearts that she was the only one for him in this life. If there was even a spark of truth in what she’d said she’d told him before, then he owed it to never quit on her even if her words belie the pained look on her face. He truly loved her. So he could feel her pain.