With The Tide

My mother took us to the beach when life was chewing her down to the bone. She’d sit behind the wheel, jaw locked, letting the Pacific roar loud enough to muffle whatever grief she couldn’t cage. I pretended I didn’t notice. Kids do that when the truth feels too big. But I heard every held breath, every wave swallowing the sound she wouldn’t let slip for our sake. I thought she was giving us wonder. She thought she gave herself a place to break without leaving marks. And now it’s me on the same stretch of rocky shore, same salt-stung wind, but I didn’t let the circle close. My son isn’t in the backseat listening for the hitch in his mother’s inhale. He’s dancing with the tide, chasing the water like the world never lied. He doesn’t know why I keep my cries synced to the surf. He doesn’t need to know. He’ll never learn to read the kind of silence that raised me. This is where the inheritance ends. My mother survived what she could. I survived what I had to. But I carried the rest of it to the shoreline myself, dragged that curse by its hair, and drowned it there. Same beach. Different woman. Different ending. If anything must keep this ache, let it be the ocean. It’s the only thing big enough.