Minnesota Goodbyes

Entry #50

I've never seen the ocean before. I guess it's not that surprising, seeing as I'm nowhere near the coast, but last year Clair and I talked about driving to California over spring break and renting someplace near the beach. It would've been a cheap, shitty place, but the idea of the surf washing over our feet and sun playing off her hair and the tang of salt in the air was alluring anyway.

Of course, she also started talking about the tides (she'd said she would study up on places and find the beaches with the best tide pools) and the moon and centrifugal force, among other things, and somehow we'd never booked the trip.

Even still, I mostly just liked the idea of us up on some rocky cliff, gazing out over the water. I liked the idea of it stretching on and on, crashing and foaming against us, the spray catching in our hair and clothes and on our skin. And when I looked back behind us, I liked the idea that the earth would fall away, leaving just the two of us on this lonely point jutting up from the sea.

When I really think about memory and try to tease it into some physical form, it's the ocean. Fogged over or slick as glass or boiling green. Warping and roiling and twisting. Something elemental and uncontrollable. I can get it all over my hands, but it slips back eventually, and only the essence lingers.

I shouldn't be so attached to this thought, but it reminds me of Clair.

There's some part of me that's afraid to go to the coast now. Like I'll gaze out at all the vastness and cave in on myself when I finally realize how alone I am. But there's this craving, too, like the tug of the tides, to go out there and see if maybe something of her still exists.

These futures I've planned for us are foolish; that we is dead.

Sometimes, though, it's easier to pretend than to linger on the things towards the end. The things I caused, the things I still can't understand. (That kiss, replaying over again. An avalanche of memory, and no matter how I try, I can't stem the tide. The arguments and fights. The shadows and light of that time, playing havoc on my mind. I can't remember it as anything but good, punctuated by that one final— )

It doesn't matter.

If I have to think of her alone, I like to think of her on that stretch of beach. It's where all my memories wash up, and there is something of them in the air, strong as salt. We're just on other sides of those waves, but someday I'll arrive on that shore guided by my sea and stars.