The first time I saw the ocean, I was with a stranger. Originally, I came with a close friend; how they came to be replaced by this mysterious individual is beyond me. In retrospect, I find it amusing how readily I accepted this arrangement. It seemed to me, at the time, the doldrums of an early summer, a sort of haziness that weighs upon one’s malleable mind, that had caused this overly receptive attitude—or had I always been this way?
My features back then would have been clear to the stranger’s eyes. With the skin tight against my face, and without wrinkles to obscure the expressions beneath, surely, it would’ve been an easy task to ascertain who I was. Though now, it is all different, as time has gotten to me, as with all people: my joints creak, veins bulge beneath the skin on my legs, as if swollen green rivers, and I must make sure to lay bathroom tissue in my undergarments for the occasional accident.
Seen from a long stretch of the shore, the sea was a smoky, uncertain gray on account of the rain that had fallen the night before. Behind us, a lodging with a wooden facade stood alone, a solitary building exposed to the elements. Back then, the wood had just been nailed onto the framing, fresh and soft, bleeding drops of sap which the flies happily drank. It was on this foggy morning that I visited the ocean.
As their eyes beheld the endless sea, I stood beside them, unsure. An image attempted to enter their eyes, though promptly denied, and left along with the ebbing tide, as though it were exhausted of trying, sighing in rejection. And as I watched the stranger, I must’ve felt unbearably uncomfortable, for my eyes began to swim from one end of the horizon to the other, desperately searching for some form of refuge. Of course, there was nothing in sight. When the wind came through the thick fog levitating above the water’s surface, tracing locks of hair behind their ear, their countenance now unobscured, I realized for the first time: I was with a stranger.
They may seem, to another stranger, the same person, but I’m certain of this fact. With their face now clearly visible, apprehension at how strikingly different this new face had appeared, at the realization that I had never noticed, blew through me, carried by the foggy breeze. Their features were now consolidated by a certain rigidity, an austerity, perhaps even loneliness. As I’m recalling this incident, it is occurring to me that I myself even felt a keen sense of loneliness. How strange.
Even though their eyes were fixed onto someplace far away (perhaps there had been an island some miles offshore; in any case, it wasn’t anything I could see, regardless of how much I wanted to), and seemed, at first, to deny whatever they beheld, eventually, some barrier gave way, allowing the cold January sea into their pupils. When the water finally left their eyes, pulled out by the ebbing tide in viscous droplets, clinging to their cheeks, I realized the waves had robbed some permanent part of them away, now hidden somewhere at the bottom of the sea, a dark place I’d never be able to reach. Indeed, a total stranger—or had things always been this way?
At the present moment, I’m standing in front the lodging, now dilapidated, burnt and weathered by the sun. It is a foggy morning, still recovering from the dark, drunken night, not unlike the day I met the stranger all those years ago.
There’s a bird flying over the sea. Its wings barely graze the surface of the water, caressing blue skin. When it plunged into the ocean, pulling out an indiscernible creature, as though it were a magician, I felt a seething envy at the graceful bird, though this quickly turned into shame, as I was suddenly reminded of how pathetic this was. Turning back, the inhabitants of the lodging now beginning to wake, the light leaking from the rooms formed dim, intangible pillars on the sand. Each room seemed to be insulated from the rest—solitary lives spinning out through scattered timelines, united by nothing but appearance.
The same, but somehow different stranger beside me (still a stranger even now) asked where we should go today. I told them I wanted to go to the bottom of the sea.
Last modified on 2026-04-08