The Ocean

I’ve never seen the ocean at night, but when I did, it evoked strange emotions that I’ve never felt before. The vastness of the bleak and dark sea didn’t call forth warmth and happiness that I felt as a child, but it conveyed a dark void, beckoning me towards it with the crashing sound of its ebbs and flows. There were no stars, there was no moon; there were only clouds that stretched on to infinity, and the unsteady waters grasping for the horizon.

I found it strange that this was the same ocean that I loved. This was the same ocean that enveloped me in its cooling crests. This was the same ocean that caressed my back with the warmth of the sun as I sat and played with the sand. That same scent of the ocean breeze now sends fear pervading through my body, standing the hairs on the back of my neck. The crashing sounds no longer remind me of frothing waves, but instead remind me of the snarl of wild beasts who are hell bent on devouring me.

The unknown that brewed inside me fermented with the most violent of fears. I fear the demon that lurks within the darkness of the Earth’s cold blanket. I fear the darkness imbued within it that threatens to swallow me.


6/??/2009