Ankle Deep

I took off my shoes and stood ankle deep in the shallow reach and run of the waves. I felt a sudden cold, the slow sink of my feet into wet sand, the gentle pull of the outgoing tide, then a tickle of seaweed as it tangled around my shin. There are moments like this when you become the sum of your own sensations. The world was being taken in through my feet, sipped joyously as if each nerve was savoring whatever came in contact with my skin. It was electric. I was motion, the deep throb of breaking waves finding a resonance, a seashell imprinting an image of itself through my heel, the freedom of wiggling toes. I felt as if I was being lifted by a strange buoyancy until the cold spread its numbing chill and I stepped out of the water back into my shoes, into my own small footprint.