HOME BEYOND THE BREAK

She swam beyond the break and turned to watch the rolling beasts heading back to shore. She'd been wanting this moment all day: to be beyond it all with only the slight sound of crowds carried on the breeze, a whole world of clamor turned delicate to nothing, and nothing else but the cold depths below and the liquid blue of the sky above.

 

It had taken a few consecutive summers for her to discover that it was possible to swim beyond the grip of life, if only for the space of a single breath, and simply be movement, as fluid as a school of fish, as electrified as sunlight on water.

There were moments when she felt a jolting awareness of work preoccupations, the undertow of friendships, old loves and the weedy entanglement of memory. She'd learnt to swim through it all and stretch beyond the heavy business of the land.

She looked back towards the city. The skyline was on fire with summer's final setting sun. She felt the day slipping away in the cold current that twisted around her feet and then she turned away from the land and set out with a firm determined stroke.