They say your life flashes

before your eyes

before you die.

But what would you remember?

I would not remember the countless hours

I spent in the family van on road trips,

crammed on the school bus in morning and afternoons,

clutching my seat with white knuckles on planes -

caught in the limbo of travel, neither here nor there

but instead in this strange purgatory, life’s intermission.

I would not remember how to decompose partial fractions

or how to find the derivative of a function;

I would not remember panic stealing my breath

and tears blurring my vision

as I desperately tried to untangle yet another math problem,

the ticking of my classroom clock drowning out all coherent thought.

I would not remember the times I held my tongue

when I knew I should have spoken out

or heard myself say yes when every fiber of my being

was yelling no, no, no. 

I would not remember friends slowly drifting away from me,

the gentle tide of time guiding us from

confidants to acquaintances to strangers. 

I would not remember watching as men with

guns, fragile masculinity, and bitter, twisted hearts

spread through my streets like roaches,

nor would I remember one calling out something incomprehensible to me

as my heart caught in my throat.

I would not remember the way my grandfather’s eyes clouded over

as he tried to remember my name

or the throbbing headache I got at his funeral. 

I would not remember the snap of my brother’s bones, so close I could hear it,

as he collided with the concrete floor,

or greedily scrawled my name on his cast in lurid neon orange. 

This is what I would remember.

Sunburns. Waves rolling and crashing around me like thunder.

Salt burning my eyes, my nose, my lungs.

My brother and friends swim beside me and I hear our babysitter calling from the shore,

so distant it might have been another world entirely.

She wants us to return, that is clear,

but we laugh and swim further, plunging through the surf.

A dog howls from far down the beach and we respond,

yipping and yowling and coughing up briny water.

Dark clouds swirl in the sky as silver sheets of rain begin to fall.

The wind picks up and the waves grow taller, more ferocious,

and I scream with giddy delight as I surface for air

and suddenly realize I have swum too far, that Iam lost out here.

I know I should be afraid, I normally would be,

but what I feel instead is joy.

The joy of losing myself,

of being entirely at the mercy of the wild, glorious sea.