south of San Francisco, purple mist wraps around the Montara Mountains. by now, it will be a cold, biting sunset in December.

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jacob is trying to teach me how to surf. we leave after dinner, from the little neighbourhood i’ve hummed the past 3 months away in. highway 1, past shoreview & the safety of my robloxian cherry tree. he’s parked next to the taco bell cantina by the quell of a half-hour.

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the wind whips us across the sand in our 3/2 wetsuits. i bear an alarming and increasing number of marks: aubergine-colored bruises ringed with stone-fruit-colored skin. they form in unfettered detail upon the crash of each salty wave, smacking me into the board.

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surfing in the Pacific winter, is a humbling experience (if you can even classify the walrus movements i’ve been doing as surfing).

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being stuck under the thrash of a churning wave is the closest I’ve ever been to death. I resurface gulping more water than air to a sky nearing dusty gold-pink.

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still, to try again is something you owe to no one but yourself.

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by the time I finally catch a wave, it is past dusk. the sun has long set and the moon illuminates the dark water. eventually, i memorize the ocean’s cues– how to flatten my body when the wave comes, when to turn.

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i wholly understand why people dedicate their lives to the rhythm of the ocean. i’m obsessed with her because she is an environment that forces total concentration. hither lies endless space; underwater valleys, undiscovered life forms. a single breath is enough to separate you from the most vibrant experience of your life, and certain death.

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past twenty meters, you are deep enough that a thermocline fades sunlight into a dim blue haze.1 look up, and the surface of the water is no longer visible. i float fetal in an embryo of blue.

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come dive with me. i’m weightless past 18 meters, and when I freefall it feels like flying. the pressure on my chest is the only thing that reminds me I’m still human.