came pain, like a flood, like a storm
surge that rammed my shore. What began
as a beautiful, beguiling body
of water—undulant, hypnotic waves
without whitecap or riptide—pushed past
my barrier islands, swept me off
my feet, keeled me over, took me
under, took me deep. How close I came
to drowning. The world I’d known
transformed. Trees were uprooted, dragged
into the ocean. Every place we’d frequented—
café, bookstore, supermarket, the neighborhood
we’d strolled, and my own home—
was unmoored, torn to splinters, bricks,
and jags of glass that thrashed
and flayed me. Engulfed, I had no choice
but to take it, to go
with the unpredictable, battering flow. I
held my breath and waited. Like every
tide, pain subsides with time, and when
this brute tide finally ebbed, she
was long gone. I stood, a tattered
castaway on shaky legs, and surveyed
the littered strand. What could I salvage
from the damage? Everything familiar still
wore the imprint of her passage. I blinked
toward the neat line of the horizon, where
blue sky met blue ocean—
how it glittered
with serene deception.
Marisa P. Clark is a queer writer whose work appears in Shenandoah, Cream City Review, Nimrod, Epiphany, Foglifter, Rust + Moth, Texas Review, and elsewhere. Best American Essays 2011 recognized her nonfiction among its Notable Essays. She hails from the South and lives in the Southwest. Follow @Professor_Gaga.