Sailing

There are days when the water exhales softly, its glass surface holding the light like a promise, and my boat - once battered and splintered - glides steady, sails catching the wind at just the moment I need them to. The storms don’t forget me. They linger at the edges of the horizon, a dark smudge where sky and sea bleed into each other. I’ve stopped cursing their coming. The waves still have teeth - they gnaw at my bow, leave me clinging to salt-soaked wood, the tremor of survival shaking through my hands. But the wind - I trust it now. The calm was never meant to stay. The storm will rise again, roaring through me, dragging me beneath its weight. But I’ve learned to sail through it, tilting my sails just so, carrying the strain, not fighting it - cutting through the water’s fury, and moving forward, even when it’s just an inch at a time. The sea is vast, endless, its horizon unwritten. But for now, the calm is enough. And when the storm returns, I will sail through that, too.