Saltwater Kisses
Fiction
At night, I dream of an ocean with no end in sight. It’s a subconscious callback to my childhood, I’m sure when all I wanted to do was dunk my head beneath the waves and pretend I was in another universe. In that other world, I could submerge myself among the shells and algae, the tide-run sand just out of reach below my floating feet.
The dream reality had been born from summer months down at my grandparents’ seaside home, where the stickiness of melting cherry popsicles was as familiar to me as the feel of water against my skin. I don’t even remember wearing real clothes during those summers, living out my entire existence in salt-stained bathing suits. I remember my grandmother’s smile, telling me what a silly thing I was, while my grandfather goaded me to come aboard his little fishing boat just to see what we could catch off the coast.
But then the memories grow fainter and less idealistic. My mom got out of rehab for what felt like the billionth time, and the rides down to the beach house became more fraught with tension and anger, like a rubber band waiting to snap. I remember my grandmother raising her voice for the first time when she found a bottle of vodka in my mother’s room. My grandfather would just shake his head and retreat back out to the boat that would dot the lonely horizon till near sunset each day.
