Blanket

The light is brighter around the stitching. I’m swaddled in comforting darkness but the glow breaking through the seams of the old quilt reminds me that the world still exists.

I’m not entirely sure what made me drive to this beach. Maybe migratory birds feel a similar pull, an invisible tether reeling you in. The marram grass gently pricked at my legs as I made my way over the dunes. The sand is warm from from a day of baking under the gentle spring sun, but the chill from deeper down creeps up to my skin.

I was tired of waiting, looking, worrying. Tired of scraping up crumbs of acknowledgment and trying to form them into something. I tortured myself with possibilities and doubts. But something snapped in me earlier. Perhaps this is freedom, or maybe it’s something else, but it all changed. I closed the laptop and walked to my car. I didn’t stop to put on shoes or throw off the blanket I had draped over my shoulders.

I can hear the tide swelling and breaking, gently slipping closer. I disturbed a flock of oystercatchers when I first arrived but they settled again a little further up the coast, mildly indignant at the disruption. My knees are against my chest, the blanket is pulled over my head and tucked under my feet. A fabric cocoon.

I feel it, gently creeping in against the numbness. Yes, I am tired.

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